Friday, February 17, 2012

Tremble and Quake

As I said I would discuss the earthquake that I mentioned in a previous blog post. As a precursor you should know that Ica is on a fault line. Since I am assuming most of you are a little rough on your Peruvian geography Ica is right next to Huancavelica. It takes me about 6 hours to get from my site to Ica City in 3 different modes of motor transportation. Anyways January 29th my fellow Huancavelica health volunteers and I were in Ica City to do things like check our mail, use the Internet, grocery shop and interact with civilization. The day of the 29th I fell ill. And by fell ill I mean I died a little. At one point I actually shouted I’m dying and Ty, the boy who lives about an hour from me in site, became so concerned that people would think that he was raping me that he went to buy me a Gatorade. Because what do you really do in that situation besides buy Gatorade and run for your life.

As a result of my illness I managed not to do 90% of the errands I needed to do. I instead remained bedridden watching reruns of Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives and Big Bang Theory. For some reason these were the only programs shown in English in the hostel. Around 12 am we were all still up. Allie was skyping with a friend. I was contemplating my impending death while screwing around on ESPN.com and Ty was on the roof. Suddenly the earth started to shake, as it so often does in a 6.3 earthquake. It took us about 15 seconds to figure out what was going on. Suddenly allie shouted “holy shit it’s an earthquake.” That poor poor friend she was skyping because then se fue the Internet and any further explanation of what was happening. We realized that we needed to get out of the hotel as fast as possible. Naturally I grabbed my computer and my Cipro, stomach medicine. No room key, no cell phone, no shoes, nothing actually useful. I also learned why there are fire codes because as we were running out the door Allie and I both almost ate shit and broke our noses. Our fan was plugged in and the cord was pleasantly taught across the doorway at just about knee height. Safety first kids, safety first.

As we were running outside there were parts of the hallway where rubble was falling. My glasses managed to protect me from getting any in my eyes; Allie was not so lucky. Since I didn’t get any rubble in my eyes and could see perfectly I was lucky enough to see a fat naked man pop his head out of his room. He has clearly been in the middle of something far more interesting than watching Grey’s Anatomy because he was standing there ass naked with a far skinnier what I can only assume was mistress standing behind him in a sheet. I assume it was a mistress because why would you take your wife to the same hotel Peace Corps volunteers stay at? We saw them later outside, fully clothed thankfully, but the woman was wearing leopard print skimpy pajamas and wedges. Clearly a last minute outfit. But I am not really one to judge because I didn’t even manage the shoes part of the equation.

After we got out of the hotel and found all members of our party we decided to walk a block to the plaza. We wanted to be far away from buildings if there was an aftershock. So I walked in no shoes and my computer in my dress. Oh also I should mention since I got sick I did not manage to change my dress from the night before. I was rocking a 48-hour party dress. Puuurrrrreeee class. Luckily there was no aftershock so after about 30 minutes we returned to the hotel and after about an hour more in the lobby we returned to our rooms to sleep. The trip up the next day was interesting because he car had to constantly dodge large boulders and rocks that had tumbled into the middle of the road. All I could think was wow glad I wasn’t on the road defiantly would have been squished.

I’m Generally Always Slipping Down a Mountain

So I realize that I haven’t written in a while. Maybe its because things are starting to feel routine in some way here. Maybe its because I might have a parasite and have been on my death bead roughly every ten days. Six in one half dozen in the other really. To give you a general picture of what I have been doing I generally wake up around 6 am and eat breakfast. Then depending on the day I wander around to do encuestas with the families in Cuiscancha, or get ready to go to the health post around 8. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have vacaciones utiles classes where I do English and art activities with the kids of Cusi. The group generally ranges from 8-12 students ages 4-11, 90% boys, but we will get to that later. Some days I do the paralous task of washing my clothes by hand with water as cold as a glacier. It sucks to wash clothes by hand. Especially towels and alpaca blankets; they are a bitch to wash with a machine. Let alone by hand in a sink with a bucket. And once in the river. At least it was sunny.

Anyways I have decided to give you all a brief family tree here because one of my friends mentioned that he was confused by the cast of characters and who belonged to Cusicancha and who belonged to the Peace Corps. For starters there are the two volunteers closest to my Ty Manning who lives in Huayacundo Arma and Ali Lawrence who lives in Quiswarapampa. Secondly my health post who are my main counterparts. There is the enfermera Feli, obstirice Deysi, enfermera Paolo, enfermero Pablo, enfermera Kerly, and doctora Paola. Finally there is there is my host mother Senroa Susana and the woman who’s house I finally work with Senora Onaranta and her children Laura, Christian and Gimella. Hopefully this gives a slightly clearer picture of who is who and who belongs where. Also this has nothing to do with the family tree I am just noting that there are more 100+ people per capita here than I have ever encountered in my life. I have decided there is something in the mixture between MSG, which is used like salt here, and organic potatoes that keeps you alive until you are 105.

So a description of my encuestas. They are surveys where I ask questions about the home, aqua and sanimiento, enfermedades, and nutricion. They are meant to give me a better picture of the type of projects I could do in Cusicancha. The encuestas have proven an intereting challenge because I have to do the majority of them before 9 in the morning or after 4 in the afternoon. Most people here are farmers so they go to the chacra in the morning and don’t return until later in the afternoon. At first I was doing encuestas with my health post with the people who live on the level part of town. But that quickly ended and I now have to climb up a mountain to find people. It is always a little embarrassing when I am trying to walk with an 80 year old woman as she casually strolls between rocks and climbs while I stumble and nearly eat shit every 10 seconds. During one of my encuestas I had to follow a woman to the chacra, which entailed some light mountain climbing and I ate it. Hard. To which she replied “Catherine you fell!” I clearly knew that. I was sitting on my ass in mud. Another one went swimmingly until I walked out the door and smacked my head on the doorframe. Peruvian doors were not meant for American girls.

On one failed venture to hunt a lady down I went with a Pablo from my heath post about a km up the road. He went on motorcycle and since I am not allowed to do that I went by foot. I was really hopinghte womanwas home because I had to go to the bathroom. Unfortunately we met a dead end so I had to have another plan of action. Naturally I climbed up a mountain to hide behind a cactus. Lord knows how I got up there. I think my need to pee over rode my rationality and reason because when I looked for the route down there wasn’t one. I was just standing behind a cactus with a path leading further up a mountain. I followed it for a little until it veered off to the top of the mountain. Not the direction I wanted to go. Unfortunately now I had stranded myself further up a mountain with even less of a way down. I walked back a little but was still stuck at the cactus. I realized that the only way down was to scale the mountain. Naturally. So I threw my back pack down the 15 feet or so not wanting any extra weight or objects and headed down. The first few steps had rocks. After that not so much. I was standing on rocks that were crumbling hoding on to weeds and I realized my best bet was to just jump down and home I didn’t die. I didn’t. Clearly since I’m writing this. I did however manage to get myself covered in dust. All in a days work.

The climb to the houses in Cusicancha is nothing compared to my walk up to one of my annexos Tambo to do encuestas. I told my host mother that I was going up to Tambo but I failed to mention that I was going to spend the night. Since I didn’t return until about 3 in the morning she was concerned that the river washed me away. I would say that that was overly concerned motherly talk if the river at one point hadn’t almost washed me away on my hike up. On my walk up to Tambo I stopped in Quiswarapampa because it started ot rain and iw as deciding whether or not I really wanted to venture the remaning hour and a half up the road. After lunch the rain broke and I decided I should head on up because back tracking home seemed like a bit of a waste. For some unknown reason a blonde dreaded dog followed me along, and continued to follow me throughout my whole hike and time in Tambo.

Now to give you a picture of the hike you walk straight into the clouds and up a mountain. There is path or a road with a plethora of switchbacks, which add about 45 minute to the trip. At one point I thought I had found the path. It was beautiful, near the river there was green chacras on either side, mountians and a greyish sky. It’s the rainy season you can’t ask for blue skies. Hell you can’t even ask for dry clothes. But then the path veered off in a direction iw asnt really sure I was supposed to go so I decided to take what I thought was another path that lead back to the road. As I climbed up the muddy path it quickly became steeper and steeperuntil it was at what seemed like an 85 degree angle. Not an angle you generally want to be climbing in without ropes. At least not an angle I should be climbing at. At least this time I wasn’t in Sperries or Uggs. The higher I got the more I realized what I was on was no in fact a path it was mud nothing had been growing with a dash of rocks thrown in.

Now I don’t know if any of you have ever experienced mud during rain but it is pretty god damn slippery. Especially for some one like me who can fall down from standing still. It has happened, sadly I am not making that up, but to be fair there was snow on the ground where I was standing still. I was getting closer to the top so I though potentially I could just keep climbing until my right foot slipped and I grabbed on to a flower for safety. Because flowers have been known for their strength and resistance. I tried to find footing for my left foot and only managed to make it up a few more inches, see a bright white light and find another flower. It was becoming increasingly clear to me that I was standing on the type of ground that leads to landslides. And there was a rushing river below me, and only a stray dog to witness my impending death. I had to walk back to solid ground. Unfortunately walking back to solid ground meant slipping down and to the right for about 20 feet, digging my hands into the dirt, and hoping to god I didn’t fall down more and get swept away in a river. When I finally made it to solid ground I decided that I should give up on the path adventure and deal with the millions of switchbacks in order to survive. Of course as I made this decision it started to rain harder and I put a plastic bag on my head for protection. To accompany the plastic tablecloth my host mother had given me to protect my backpack. I looked super nifty.

While in Tambo I accomplished 8 encuestas, one man turned me down. Later that night he drank a dash of rat poison, don’t worry he is still alive thanks to my health post. But now one of the reasons being tossed around for his attempted suicide is my encuestas. I may be the Pishtaca, a mythical person that comes to steal children. So I maaayyy not be doing any more encuestas there.

But away from my adventures in hiking and on to other news. Another fun part of the encuestas is that I am often invitired to food, especially since I generally do my encuestas around the breakfast hour. Normally it is something simple like soup or aguita or papas con queso. One time it was anything but. I was first invitired to pachamanga de cuy. Which is guinea pig with sweet potatoes, potatoes, corn and cheese. I assumed that this was it. Nope. She then informed me that I had not eaten breakfast yet. I was in fact on breakfast number 3 at that time. So then I was served soup, which was my breakfast. I thought I was then in the clear. But then I as served masamora, which is a flour and sugar concoction that is desert material. On the way down the mountain I kinda felt like I was going to explode. I had to take a nap because I was too full to function.

The encuestas have really shone light into the lives and tales of Cusicancha. Some of my encuestas have been super positive, where I leave feeling like the people really want to work with me. 2 have involved tears. One after asking my first question “what health problems have you had this year?” Unbeknownst to me this lead to a discussion about how her mother had died and depression and self-esteem is a problem in Cusicancha. The second involved an old single tia discussing with me how she missed her children and her one son here is a drunk who beats his wife. Another started with me introducing myself to a family, later finding out that they were not the family that lived in the house I was at, only the 80 year old and her mother did. As I was sitting there eating breakfast I could hear an argument brewing outside between the husband and wife I earlier thought lived in the house. Then I realized I was sitting in a room all by myself with a crying 103 year old woman. I was confused as fuck. So I walked outside and I was told I should come to the plaza and watch. I realized I was being told to watch a domestic dispute, taking place in the plaza. At one point the woman was shaking in fear saying htat she didn’t want to go back up to her house with her husband. I didn’t know if I should look up, down, right or left. So I just sat there with 3 older members in the community listening to the commentary about the fight occurring below.

The presence of domestic violence is something that I knew I might encounter but I did not realize how much I would notice it. It is not that every man beats his wife in Cusicancha, there are actually only a handful that I know of in Cusicancha proper. There is a larger presence in some of my annexes. It is just this is the first time in my life where I have been in a position to ask about the presence of domestic violence in the home and gotten responses that range from a young girl saying that her mom agrees with men beating women, a man saying he only occasionally hits his wife and a woman saying that she views sex as an obligation. It is hard at times to not feel like is nothing that I can really do but my current plan is to work with the young girls. Particularly with the young girls in the houses I have identified as at risk because realistically there probably isn’t much I can do about the mothers and fathers. All I can really hope to do is reach the girls in order to provide a different view of relationships and gender equality.

That feels like a very somber note to end on so I will leave you with this. My next blog entry will describe carnival. Where I had to walk around in front of my whole town in a long red skirt, rain boots, a hat, my super nifty transition lenses a weird shade of half brown, and a balloon under my skirt to accentuate my ass. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.