Clouds & Mountains

Fun Fact No. 48: Fanny packs. So if you're from England, you're already offended, but it's kind of funny that people in Peru (especially men) wear fanny packs EVERYWHERE. 1989? Nope. 2007. Granted, I'm no fashion plate, but it is kind of funny that fanny packs are the backpack or purse of Peru.

So after some more time off from blogging, I greet you again but this time I am refreshed! I got back on Thursday night from a 6 day vacation in Lima and Cusco with Kami and Shun and let me tell you, it was spectacular. Here we go:

Friday, April 13. Eva Ayllon in the HOUSE!
Eva Ayllon, perhaps the most well-known singer of Peru, was HERE in IQUITOS on Friday and she was amazing! She mostly sings Afro-Peruvian songs and she has a deep, rich, better-than-Aretha voice (if you can believe it) and she was absolutely electrifying. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay for the whole show because I had to catch my plane to Lima.

Saturday, April 14. 2am travels...
So my friend Zeudy spent the night at my house and I got home from Eva Ayllon at 2am. We grabbed a mototaxi to the airport for our 4am flight. I had been sleeping a good 9 hours a day for a few weeks now, which served me well for the next 48 hours of non-sleep. We got into Lima at 5:45 and headed straight to Zeudy's friend's house for breakfast. Her friend's mom was a lovely woman named Gloria who reminds me a lot of Esther Raizen, Michal's mom, and she was a delight. We went to Miraflores where Kami and Shun were staying in a gorgeous hostal that's actually a mansion divided into lots of little rooms. It's a neat place and imagine our surprise when we found out the next day that the owner had kidnapped his cousin and his cousin's son and starved them to death in one of the rooms. Spooky!

Regardless, after not sleeping now for over 24 hours, I was doing pretty well. We went to Punta Hermosa (see above photo) south of Lima and swam in the ocean all day. Mario was in Lima also, so we met up with him and just relaxed. That night we went to eat in Barranco, a very hip part of Lima and then Kami, Zeudy and I went back to the hostel. We slept for about 4 hours before we had to get up to catch a 6am flight to Cusco.

Sunday, April 15. Altitude?
Shun, Kami, and I got into Cusco at 8am and Lilia was there to meet us. What a reunion! It was so SO good to see her, and it was a gorgeous day in Cusco, sunny and warm. We went to the hostel and slept for a few hours to catch up a bit, and then Kami and I went to Lilia's house for lunch. Since I live practically at sea level in the Amazon and in Texas, I was really expecting the altitude (3,700 meters or 11,500 feet) to get to me, but I was completely unaffected. Kami, on the other hand, got pretty ill pretty quickly and had to rest. The extreme cold of anywhere in the shade and the night didn't help. Seriously, I don't do well in cold climates. AT ALL.

Monday, April 16. Hot Springs.
We woke up bright and early to catch the 7am train to Aguas Calientes, a small town just at the base of Machu Picchu. The train ride was glorious: 4 hours of amazing landscapes with mountains, rivers, villages, snow-capped peaks, bright blue skies. Aguas Calientes is the most touristy town I have EVER been to and it was quite expensive also. But our hotel was gorgeous and was right on the banks of a river with rapids which was the perfect music for a good night's sleep. Outside our window were the river and the steep cliffs leading up to the clouds. Just amazing! That evening we went to the hot springs and soaked for an hour or so. It was just heaven!

Tuesday, April 17. Man or nature?
We woke up early to catch the 5:30am bus to Machu Picchu. Thank goodness we did, because we were the first ones there. And what a sight. It was misty and rainy, which made it that much more magical because we were touching LITERALLY TOUCHING clouds! And I can't figure out what is more impressive: the brilliant nature that God created, with steep, moss-covered cliffs or the clever architecture that the Incas created out of those same cliffs. We climbed to Intipunku, the temple of the sun, where we could see the clouds coming and going, like curtains opening and closing on a gorgeous set. It was unbelievable. We were there until 3:30 in the afternoon when we finally caught a bus back to Aguas Calientes to grab the train back to Cusco.

Wednesday, April 18. Valle Sagrado.
The highlight of the trip for me was the Sacred Valley. Lilia came to pick us up with her cousin Saul at 9am and we went to various and sundry ruins throughout Cusco. They were all really neat until we drove out to the Sacred Valley. (And I got to drive! It was so nice to drive a CAR after driving a motorcycle for so long! I prefer cars!) This was completely awe-inspiring. If anyone doubts that there is a higher being out there somewhere, just head on out to Sacred Valley. Seriously, folks, I have never ever seen anything so beautiful in my life. And while I haven't necessarily seen that much, I have been around, and this beats the Grand Canyon, Tenarife Island, Bali, Ghana...wow. I was just awe-struck. I'll upload the pictures later. I'm still processing.

After our day-long tour of the valley, we took Lilia out for Japanese food. It was a kick to see her trying tofu, sushi, and teriyaki chicken for the first time. We had a ball!

Thursday, April 19. Homewardbound...
I left Cusco at 6:30am. Zeudy picked me up from the airport and we went to downtown Lima and then to her friend's house for lunch. I got back to Iquitos at 7pm to my housemates who were having a party for Monica. It was just wonderful to see them, although I do wish I had the chance to go to Puno with Kami and Shun, who will be coming here on Monday.

I have so much more to say than this blog entry, but I'll save it for later because I'm still processing. But it was a wonderful vacation. Completely wonderful. I feel refreshed and rejuvenated and I'm ready to bring it on.

Leeches

Fun Fact No. 47: Houses are long and narrow. Houses from the outside here look really small, like about half the size of a little two bedroom in Hyde Park. But actually, even the poorest house is huge because the houses here are really long and narrow. So there might be five or six rooms because houses here are really deep; they often stretch back an entire block. Still disconcerting when I think I´m walking into a shack and it just keeps going and going.


This week has been the best week in a long time, despite the Leech. Ah, the Leech. And So It Shall Be That He Who Was Rude and Icky Shall Be Referred To As THE LEECH. I´ll start from the beginning on this one. This guy calls last Sunday saying that he met my brother in Bolivia and my brother gave him my number. Sure, I live in Iquitos and I can even pick you up from the airport, I say. His flight gets in at 1am so I tell him he can stay in my house that first night and the next day I can take him to a hostel. There´s a really nice hostel that´s $4 a night and it has a kitchen and private bathrooms. It´s fabulous but he said he was looking for something cheaper. !!!! Well, I get to the airport and it´s a slightly older-than-my-brother guy (39) who we´ll call Leech for his privacy and whatnot, who says he´s been living in Buenos Aires for the last three years producing music and inventing stuff. And from Iquitos he´ll be heading out to Corpus Cristi to work in oil making boku bucks. Turns out he´s half Native American (Ponca Tribe from OK), and he´s here to get in touch with his indigenous roots, etc. And he´s an expert reflexologist, physicist, and music producer, among other things (April, does anyone from our Fem Studies class ring a bell?). And is WAY too touchy feely and can´t seem to ride on the back of my motorcycle without grabbing my waist in an offensive and "getcher mitts off me" kind of way. After excessive cringing and flinching, he asked if I have a boyfriend and I said yes, and I´m rather uncomfortable with the way yee-who-has-known-me-less-than-12-hours feels at liberty to invade my bubble. A brief apology was feebly uttered and then began the rampage. He´s all about getting back to his native roots and whatnot even though he´s been exiled repeatedly from his tribe and he´s about to go bust out a job in the petroleum industry which, as you may or may not know, is enemies with most native peoples because they´re sitting on goldmines in their little villages or reservations. AND he doesn´t believe in personal responsibility, just personal happiness. So the rest of the world can go screw itself because the only thing that he or God cares about is his happiness. And to top it all off, in the four days he was here, he seduced a 16 year old girl and talked about how when he´s chief of his tribe he wants a Peruvian princess at his side. And he said that the United States is the most evolved country in the world. That´s right folks, he said evolved. So spake the leech, one of the less evolved species among us.

How I put up with this, you ask, in my own home for 4 days? Insane patience and a quest for tranquility. I have been unhappy and depressed for many moons and this past week I started to come out of it, feeling much more relaxed. So I stayed away from my house, kept busy with fieldwork, and attempted not to commit homicide. Despite Leechy, it was a great week with lots of good interviews, some great flute lessons, and a general peace. And this is when I ask myself what I think many of us who have been to the jungle ask ourselves: why does the Amazon attract the weirdest people? Obviously I have to be counted among the weirdos as I am a white girl living in the Amazon, but most of the gringos here are extreme. Extreme nuts, that is. I´ll share an analysis of the fruits and nuts who live in this area another day.

On a non-leech note, tonight there´s a velada (relgious dance) celebrating Easter. Veladas are always nice because they serve food and coffee and dessert, and the old ladies dancing with their hankerchiefs in front of the statue of the Saint of the Day is really sweet and relaxing. The folkloric group I´ve been working with is playing it, and so it´s part of the fieldwork, but I really love it anyway.

I travel soon. Hooray!

Tourism

Fun Fact No. 46: You have to ask for permission when you walk into a house. OK, that sounds silly written out like that, but what I mean is this: You knock on someone's door and they let you in, which you would think would be good enough, but then you still have to say "permiso" when you cross the threshold.

So Kami and Shun will be here in about a week and a half. Kami Meighan is my dear friend from back in the day at Bowling Green State University. We were glassblowing partners and then she lived in my house for a while, and then she took over my old job at Glass Axis, a non-profit public access glassblowing studio in Columbus, Ohio. She has since gone on to get her master's in glass at Ohio State, and she works in one of the most prestigious glass galleries in the world, Hawk Galleries in Columbus. We went to Ghana, West Africa together five years ago, and we had a wonderful time traveling together. Since then, we have had many adventures together, and now she's coming to Peru with our friend Shunsuke Tsuchiya. Shun is perhaps the goofiest kid I know. He also went to BGSU for art, although for computer art and graphic design instead of sculpture like Kami. We had a wild summer in 2001. The three of us were inseparable and since then, the bond has been formed. Anyway, they'll be here on the 12th and I'll be heading down to Lima and then we'll go to Cusco together. And at this moment is when the word TOURISM enters.

I'm a bad tourist. I'm an uncomfortable tourist. I generally don't like being a tourist because I am SO aware of the inequalities between my wallet and the wallets of the people in the country being visited. Although I am seriously hard-pressed for cash these days, I am still American with a savings account and a $500/month apartment. I can't seem to get over the bad parts of tourism: ignorant consumption of culture, essentialized people / places, etc. It just stresses me out. The ground is uneven and my guilt is tremendous and it's only gotten worse in recent years. I know that my dollar is helping so-and-so's economy, but I just don't let that enter in my guilt calculations.

Now I've never been to Cusco. I know that Machu Picchu is one of the most wonderful things on earth, blah blah blah, but to be in a city with more geriatric Germans than anything else just makes me uncomfortable. As a result I'm nervous. I know I need to get the hell out of dodge because I am sad and unhappy in Iquitos and I need a break, but still, I'm not sure how much less stressed I'll be in Cusco. Luckily my good friend Lilia is there, and she'll be pretty great to have as our tour guide. Regardless, I need to learn to relax and enjoy.

Buzzards

Fun Fact No. 45: Tow or push? If you run out of gas on your motorcycle, or if it just doesn´t work, you can choose to have it towed by a motorkar (motorcycle with rickshaw thing behind it) OR you can do the most common thing: have a friend push you. You steer your motorcycle, your friend on his or her motorcycle puts his or her right foot on one of the the footrests and literally pushes you. Now, it seems to me like this would be a recipe for disaster, and I´m sure it often is. But I have yet to crash as a result of this method, and I have had to use it on more than one occasion. Very unique.

So you know motorcross? Motorcycles zipping around obstacle courses? Iquitos is like a big obstacle course and driving on unpaved roads (80% of all the roads in the city are unpaved) is like a game of chess or checkers: you really have to think about your next move and how that one will affect the rest of them. It´s great for a person like me who likes puzzles, but a little dangerous because my balance has not always been great. But I have yet to crash or fall, so there you go. On a really muddy road it´s a fun challenge to determine the best route. Often I have to stop altogether and analyze my choices: mud or puddle? Sand or rocks? The puddle might be deep, but the mud might be sticky. The sand always pulls your tires the wrong way, but the rocks could puncture your tires. It´s actually really great problem solving and it gets my mind off of other things.

So there are no flights into Iquitos between 9am and 4pm. Why, you ask? The buzzards over the dump. Yup, the dump is right next to the airport and there are so many vultures over the dump between those hours that the plane will crash. Ever seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? When Sean Connery waved his umbrella at the pigeons on the beach and they all flew up into one of the Nazi bombers? Kind of like that, except they´re huge passenger planes and huge vultures. There´s a plan, though, and they´re hoping to be able to open the airport during the day within two months. They have yet to share the plan with Iquitos, but everyone is excited about it. Blow up the vultures? Blow up the dump? Move the dump? Who knows, but if it involves Iquitos ingenuity, I´m sure it´ll be great.

Speaking of Iquitos ingenuity, despite several glaring inefficiencies in this city, there are many clever solutions.

GARLIC. Don´t chop it. Use the back of a spoon to basically shave it close. Quick, easy, and no danger of cutting yourself.

TIRES. Don´t buy a new innertube for your motorcylce or bike. Use an iron and some tar to patch up those nasty holes. It saves a good amount of cash and time. And to find the holes, inflate the tube and then submerge it in water. Bubbles appear where the holes are.

DIRT. Don´t bust out bleach and whatnot to clean nasty grime. Grab some sand from the street and scrub.

FLIES. Don´t just smack them with the fly swatter. Because the fly swatters here come with big plastic tweezers in the handles to pick up that nasty fly and throw it in the trash.

LEMONADE. Don´t settle for just plain ole squeezed lemons and sugar water. Put it all in a blender with the skins of one or two lemons. It makes a frothy, tasty yumminess.

There´s lots more, but these are just things that I could think of off the top of my head. In our next edition, folks, I´ll be sharing a general critique of fuzzy and non-fuzzy animals as part of daily cuisine a la Michael O´Brien and Julia McReynolds´ clever and informative analysis of Argentine meat. My tales will include turtle, rabbit, armadillo, and other of our fauna friends.

Jews & News

Fun Fact No. 43: Pure bred dogs run wild! Seriously, there are Dalmatians, Huskies, Pomeranians, Chihuahuas running wild throughout Iquitos. I’m not sure how they got here, but they seem to keep reproducing and they run wild. Everywhere.

Fun Fact No. 44: speaking of dogs, they attack motorcycles too! You’d think you’d be safe from packs of angry dogs when you’re on a motorcycle. Big, two-wheeled noisemaker with an engine. It scares me, but not very many dogs. I have been attacked by dogs while going at a good clip on my motorcycle. Luckily I do have speed in my favor. And if you hock a logy, it scares them. I think it’s the aggressive throat-clearing action that intimidates them, not the phlegmball.

Once again, I fell off the radar. Sorry, folks. I need to get out of Iquitos so I am going to Lima and then Trujillo with my friend Lissette's family. Or maybe I'll just go alone, because I need to get out of this place. I don't know that much about Trujillo but people say it's great, so I'm going to give it a whirl. And then we'll see if I don't just hop a plane to Austin. Just kidding! I am being very productive in my fieldwork lately, so I know I need to stick it out. Plus my motorcycle is better than ever these days and I really enjoy zipping around town.

On Sunday I went to Zungarococha Bungalows with my new roomie, Sandrine (a fabulously low-key, super sweet French girl who works at the regional government), Monica, Gloria, and my mechanic, Hiro Hito (yes, his parents idolize Japanese culture. His sister is Yuriko...they're creative people). Zungarococha is a beautiful cocha (or giant lake) a good 30 minutes into the jungle. It's perfectly quiet, no motorcycles and there's a raft in the middle of the lake that you can take a canoe to get to and then just dive off and swim. The water is gorgeous: cool and amber-colored, and it's just lovely. We bought tacacho (plantain balls) and juanes (rice, saffron, and chicken cooked in banana leaves) and ate on the raft and floated on the cocha. It was heavenly!

The motorcycle diaries continue, and they're arresting the guy who took the commission off the sale of my bike. The good thing about the drama is I met Victor (the step son of the old man who sold me the motorcycle), an extremely sweet Jewish boy (hard to find here) who is preparing for his Israel Birthright trip. Except it's different here than in the US. Because there are so few Jews in Iquitos, they have established a program that takes the Jews in waves to Israel after three years of extensive coursework with the aim of keeping them in Israel. It's not just a visit, it's for keeps (if they want to). This is the third and final trip, with about 200 Iquitos Jews going. The first trip was in 2001 (800 Iquitos Jews), the second in 2004 (400 Iquitos Jews) and now there are only 200 left. 98% of Iquitos Jews who go to Israel end up staying there, living in Latin American communities and working and studying. Victor was so excited to see the pictures from Jamie Freedman's recent trip that he is as ready as he'll ever be. He leaves in September and he plans on bringing his family with him after 6 months. It's neat to see him so excited about it, and so into Judaism.

Genevieve's friend Carla was here with her BF Oron a few weeks ago and how lovely it was to see them! It's so strange to have someone from Austin here, seeing what I see and living what I live. It was great to have them, if only for a short time, and they introduced me to their friend Andrew who is studying with one of the few female shamans out in BFE. Andrew is a playwrite from California who speaks Spanish very well and now stays at my house whenever he's in town. A really interesting person, and a nice new friend. Most of you know that I could use real friends down here.

Turns out my landlady's a jerk. She ignores our calls and pleas for repairs and she owes me S/. 75 for replacing the deadbolt on the inside door of our house. We repeatedly asked her for a contract or lease or something and she wiggled her way around it. The funny thing is that because I changed the deadbolt (the other one just broke clean off), she has no way of getting into the house. So I guess right now we're living rent free. And because I lived at the lumber store for so long, I have friends who can fix things that are wrong with the house for cheap. Kind of funny, but great because every penny I can save, I will.

Recent wonderful news is that my dear friend Mario Luis (geographer from UT to refresh memories) was awarded a TAship for this coming school year so he'll be in Austin. I want him to live at good ole Andrew's Apartments, because he'd be a great new addition. I'm excited to have him in Austin. He was afraid that he would have to return to Paraguay without an assistantship, so we're both pretty happy. Good news!

Autumn....

Fun Fact No. 42: No napkins, no knives. Eat at anyone´s house and even if they serve the toughest meat alive (or dead, we hope), you will most likely not receive a knife. Or napkin. And if you get a napkin, it´s basically a square of TP. Little absorbing quality, I might add.

No, it´s not the same, but right now as we get ready to enter "winter", it almost feels like fall. Today I woke up cold, as it was about 75º and rainy. I put my blue jeans on (isn´t that a song?) and bundled up with a sweatshirt. The rain cleared and a nice breeze set in, and now the sky is a crisp blue and it´s sunny but not hot. It made me nostalgic for autumn in any place where the leaves change (unlike in the Amazon). Sunday was the same, and I did nothing at all the whole day long.

My house is really a peaceful place. It´s been lovely every evening around 9 to sit by the jacuzzi with a glass of red wine and chat with my roomies. We talk about what we did that day, and about what our plans are for the next day, and how much we enjoyed such-and-such a movie. It´s just so relaxing. And then around 10:30 or 11 I hit the sack and sleep like a baby until the next day. My running shoes were stolen, but I´m going to have my dad bring me another pair, and then I´m going to get back in the swing of the way things are supposed to be. I live right by a very, very, VERY long paved road that is perfectly quiet early in the morning, and thus I can begin my pre-training for New York or Chicago, depending on which one Karla and Michael want to do. I´m going to run my next marathon in 4:10, dammit!

I think the boss of Grupo Explosión is in the mafia. Well, he dresses like it anyway and it´s nearly impossible to get in to see him. You´d think he was Madonna´s manager at how inaccessible he is. I have spent about 3 days just waiting to see him for an interview that can´t seem to happen. Luckily I am not one to give up, and this is minor compared to waiting for other crap in this country to happen. You think the bureaucratic BS in the US is intense, wait til you see Peru´s. Grrrrrr!!!!!!

Other news is that Genevieve´s friend Carla is here (surprise!) with her boyfriend Ron, and it´s great to see them. It´s surreal having someone from Austin see my world here. Everything has become so normal for me, and I take a lot of things for granted. Like the enormous quantity of motorcycles here. Or the crazy fruits. Or the thatched roofs. Or the giant rivers everywhere. I need to appreciate it because despite all the crap, I know that when I get on that plane, I´m going to be sad, even though I´ll be thrilled to get back to Austin.

Global Disasters?

Me & Mariela Nieto straight from Buenos Aires, & me on my motorcycle.

Fun Fact No. 41: Papayas and Tables. That’s right folks, whatever it is that you need, be it papayas, tables, playing cards, pornos, yuca, you name it, there are people selling it door-to-door every day. It’s actually convenient, because just the other day we had some people over and we didn’t have enough chairs and a little kid was selling small wooden benches for about $1 a piece. We bought three.

Thank you all for your kind notes and emails. I really appreciate it. I didn’t share a lot of the crappy stuff that was going on along the way because I didn’t want to admit that I wasn’t having a good time, or that I really wasn’t happy here. But things are really changing and I am getting much better. Graciela and Cesar both come from shaman families, and they did some spiritual cleansings of the house, and it really made a difference. Plus just being in a beautiful house with great people has been so relaxing. I get to bed at a normal hour and I sleep a good 8 hours, something I was hard pressed to do in the other house. I miss the lake and the people in the other house, but I visit them every day.

My field work is also on the upswing. I got a great interview with a touring band the other day, completely by chance, and it got me thinking about other things. They say that your field work never turns out the way you planned and sure enough, it might just be taking a shortcut to a slightly different thesis. But it’s good – it’s opening my eyes to new possibilities and it’s making me think more.

On what has come to be the comical side (although it began as a traumatic headache), my motorcycle diaries continue. It turns out there’s an embargo on my motorcycle from 1997 that the original owner (a very, VERY unpleasant woman) never paid. I got fed up and went to the police. Sub-Official Lozano (a very handsome young man on the upside) is helping me straighten everything out. I’ve reported the jerk who took the commission on the sale, and it’ll most likely go to trial because he’s unresponsive, but I have two eye-witnesses, so it’s looking like I’ll win. It has really become funny, though, because more and more malarkey bubbles up. A curse? Perhaps. But I’ll beat it!

Not to scare anyone, but the end of the world is near. No, I haven’t started attending one of those nutty Pentecostal churches that litter the streets of Iquitos. But it didn’t rain here for 43 days in a row. Did I mention that I’m living in the heart of the Amazon? P.S., it’s supposed to rain here AT LEAST two times a week in the “dry” season, and we’re not even in the dry season yet. Decreasing water levels, overpopulation of certain fishes because they have nowhere to go combined with the fact that 98% of the Peruvian Amazon is either in contract or already sold to Big Petroleum companies are all signs that we’re going to hell in a handbasket. I’m not trying to depress you, although I’m sure you’re crying, but we’ve got issues folks. I’m going to need each and every one of you to write some letters and soon. I’ll get you the details.

On lighter notes, I saw the movie The Illusionist the other night. I really enjoyed it. Considering that the only movies that come to Iquitos tend to be crappy, I was pleasantly surprised.