In which I have a half-hour one-sided conversation entirely about the weather

The rainy season, which has been going on since I arrived in Santo Domingo five months ago, is at last letting up. This is good in a lot of ways; first and foremost, it makes hiking and exploring the campo a pleasant and less rushed undertaking. Second, I have been told again and again that this is a totally different town when the rain lets up. There are more parties, as people are generally in better spirits. Third, transportation out is more dependable, quick, frequent, and inexpensive when it’s not raining. I have to admit, though, that I will miss the rain. For one, it was the one stable thing about my first months here. No matter what kind of work I was doing, who I was working with, how my living situation was, what I was eating, or how I felt, there was always rain starting at about 2 pm, going till about 5 pm, and then starting up again around 7 pm, ending at some point during the night, and then I would wake up to a sunny, warm 7 am. This has been the pattern, with little variation, since December. Sometimes the rain would just last all afternoon, without relent. Those were my favorite afternoons.

I’ve been told that I got lucky, that this was a particularly easy winter, that sometimes, it rains all day and all night the entire season. I haven’t really looked into the veracity of this statement, nor have I figured out the El Niño mechanics in this part of Peru. I was pretty sure this was an El Niño year, which would have meant heavier rains and possible evacuation, but that was not the case. People in town have told me that “el fenómeno” only happened in the jungle and central sierra this year, not in this part of the Andes. I realized quickly that when you discuss El Niño here, you have to say “el fenómeno,” or else it sounds like you’re saying something like, “Was the boy in the jungle this year?”

The great thing about those rainy afternoons in particular was I felt like I had nature’s permission to sit in my room and do whatever I felt like from 2 pm on. If I ever started to feel guilty about this, I would just take on a more Peruvian way of considering it. “Well, I can’t go out. I’ll catch the frío.” Which was silly of me, because the “cold” weather that everyone complains about here, I put in quotation marks, as I lived in Michigan my entire life.
One of my favorite conversations here is the “How cold is Michigan?” one. My general way to describe it is, “The winters last from November to April and it’s rarely above 0 degrees. There is ice everywhere.” (A lot of campo people use “ice” to mean “snow,” as both are rare. It’s like the first chapter of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Usually the distinction is “ice that falls.” I roll with it.) One time a man from the campo looked awed, as they often do, and said, “Wow, you must live at about 4,000 meters for it to be that cold.” I was really confused for a minute, and then I realized I hadn’t explained that I didn’t live in the mountains, that it was along the latitude, not temperature, gradient that Michigan gets its frío.

Onto other topics that are not universally signs of bad conversation. I think one of the things that people appreciate about the “simpler life” that Peace Corps provides is the possibility to really develop a hobby or two that might otherwise remain latent, and reading has been mine. It’s nice not to consider myself among the majority of Americans who say like they would read for pleasure, if only they had the time and/or energy. I made a list of everything I’ve read since I got to Peru today, and realized that if I’ve read an average of very nearly 2 books for every month I’ve been here. (It wouldn’t be “very nearly,” but rather “exactly,” if I counted the Mary Higgins Clark book I read when I was sick and there are nothing else around. I refuse to do so.) They are as follows:

- Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking
- Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
- Tim O’Brien, Going After Cacciato
- Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony (The irony of counting this but not Mary Higgins Clark has not escaped me.)
- Koren Zailckas, Smashed
- E.M. Forster, Howards End
- Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
- Yann Martel, The Life of Pi
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird
- Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains
- Levitt and Dubner, Freakonomics
- Mario Vargas Llosa, Death in the Andes

It’s a good list. I find it rare to read that many consecutive books and not think, “Well that one wasn’t worth the effort,” but that’s how this list is. To be fair, I felt that way through 85% of A Farewell to Arms, but I came around at the end. (Not “in the end” but “at the end.” I just liked the tragic ending, and not really the rest of the book.) If I had to pick three that I thought everyone should read, I guess it would be The Undertaking, Kavalier & Clay, and Jailbird. And if you’re not feeling Vonnegut at this point in your life, then replace Jailbird with One Hundred Years of Solitude, which you should have read already anyway.

Books started but not completed as of yet:
- William Gibson, Neuromancer. As Dan put it, “You’re either in a cyberpunk phase or you’re not.” Or, as Brett put it in the letter which accompanied the book, “Though reading about megalopolises and the future in the campo might be jarring.” Either way, it seemed like it would be something I would enjoy in a different state of mind. (I really, really appreciate that spell check thinks nothing of “megalopolises.”)
- Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel. I started this, and then I lost it in a cab 60 pages later. I got through the part about Peru, though, so I feel moderately satisfied. I probably won’t bother to revisit it.
- Edward Rutherford, London. I started it with Andrew in the hospital (if that sounds pathetic, consider the fact that I had an IV in one hand and wasn’t much for holding a 1,000-page paperback), and then the day I got out of the hospital, I got four books in the mail (Howards End, Ragtime, Smashed, and Artemis Fowl). I started on the four books, as I wanted to be able to thank the people who sent them. I’ll be revisiting this after I finish Ragtime.

Books on my list to purchase and then read:
- A biography of Ché Guevara. I could use some context for all the bereted tattoos and variable fluorescent memorabilia in this country.
- A history of the Sendero Luminoso guerilla movement.
- A heavily footnoted study Bible. Hey, I’ve got the time.

My last point about books is just that I really like reading books that people have sent, especially if they’re on their favorites list. It’s a good way of trans-equatorial bonding. And if the idea of getting other people to catch on to your favorite books is appealing, the Volunteer book-passing tradition is strong here in PC-Peru. Email me if you want to take part in this apparent pledge drive.

Highlights of this week:
- Giving an ad-libbed speech about the importance of nutrition and eating local foods in front of 200 people, including the PTA-type organism and NGO leaders from Lima.
- Realizing the ladies in my town will defend my and/or Andrew’s honor, possibly not to the death, but certainly to the point of awkward, abrupt conversation endings. As it happened, a guy who was talking to Sra. Charo and me asked, in a loaded fashion if you ask me, if I was “single or married.” I couldn’t get a word out past “single but” before Charo shouted, “Single with a fiancée! AND YOU’RE MARRIED.” (It’s a rough translation, but I think Sra. Charo thinks I am engaged, and situations like this constantly prove to me there is no need to correct her.)
- Working on my initial baseline report really hard, as I should have been doing for awhile. I have nothing witty to say about that.
- How many of the initial 25 kids I did the river cleanup with attended my second and third English class? Yeah, 5. And one of them was Sra. Charo’s daughter, who I know was parentally forced to go. The good news about this is I can officially say that English classes aren’t successful in Santo Domingo and are not a good use of my time, and I’m off the hook for the rest of my service. And if I ever get sucked into doing them again, I’ll know that “The Hokey-Pokey” is a tad too complicated for most kids to catch on to, and maybe “Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes” is the way to go. “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” worked like a charm, though.

It's the circle of life...blog entry.

I have just returned to my room from the back of the house, where there are new residents, a mother with her 2-day-old baby. The prospect of living with, but not within audible range of, a baby this adorable is pretty exciting in my world. The mother, Flor’s friend Maria who lives in the campo and came into town last week to “give light” at the Centro de Salud in Santo Domingo, says she will stay up to a week. My life perpetually needs more babies (that I only have to deal with for short periods of time), so I am happy.

In some sort of trite, oft-cited cycle, this week was also my first experience with Peruvian funerals. It is probably inevitable that all Volunteers end up going to a funeral or two in town (we are here two years, after all), but it came as a surprise that the first one I would attend would be so early in my service, of a woman I knew fairly well, and under incredibly tragic circumstances. The city councilwoman in charge of education, Madeleyne, was out hiking with some friends and fell off a cliff on Saturday. She was only 28. I’d known her through work; we’d attended a lot of the same meetings, including the meeting I had with my bosses here. My APCD had even suggested that I bring her to the Peace Corps project design workshop later this year to start work on an environmental education program in the schools. I’d looked up to her, as was young, female, unmarried, and in a position of authority in the municipality. So that was intense.

Funerals are decidedly one on those things that differ culture to culture, and I’m not sure it occurred to any of my friends that I simply had no idea what to do. Flor told me I should go out to her parents’ house in the campo and “acompañar” the family for awhile. That struck me initially as a very personal thing to do, but as it turned out, that’s what everyone in town does. There were literally 500 people over the course of a day in and around their house. When we walked in (I went with some guys from the municipality, including Humberto, with whom I’d been working that day), we greeted her father. I think the only reason people know what to say to grieving parents is they’ve heard it before as a matter of custom, but it occurred to me the second I walked in the door that I had absolutely no idea what to say to him in Spanish, which struck me as appropriate. I settled for a silent hug, mostly afraid “I’m sorry” would translate too literally, etc.

Yesterday was the big to-do. The procession started at her high school, where the principal and a couple professors did eulogies, walked down the street to the mayor’s house, and then into the Municipality for more eulogies, to the church for Mass, and then up to the cemetery. The thing that still amazes me about rural Peru is all of these places were within 5 minutes walking of each other. Luckily, I found one of my friends, a elementary school teacher about my age, who told me to just follow her and do whatever she did. The Mass was nice, although I had the distinct impression the priest was saying her name “Magdelene” with a g, no one said anything. I said all the prayers in English. People seemed to find this acceptable.

I really have nothing profound to say about Madeleyne’s death, but in the interests of a not particularly morbid transition (i.e. “funeral” to “iPod” in two sentences), I note at this point that I will not be discussing it for the rest of the entry.

The one great thing for me that came of the last couple days was the reunion with my favorite campo woman, who once sat next to me on the bus and asked for half my iPod headphones so she could listen to “the music of my land.” Let it be noted that she found the opening chords of Fruit Bats’ “Canyon Girl” acceptable. The day of the funeral she brought a bag of fruit (bananas, oranges, and chirimoyas, delicious native Peruvian fruits that have the somewhat apt English translation of “custard apples”) from her chacra just for me! I was profoundly appreciative. I also determined from her, as she was looking through my pictures, that the word “simpático,” taught since 6th grade Spanish to mean “kind,” might in fact mean “handsome.” Unless, of course, it is just terribly obvious that Andrew Cornelius is a nice person just by the looks of him, I stand corrected.

I have started working on putting together the pieces of my final report on Santo Domingo for Peace Corps. It is turning into more work than I initially thought it would be. Santo Domingo is a complicated place. Just the history of development efforts in town is a 6-page chart in the municipality’s strategic plan for development. The history begins in 1985, so sadly, Peace Corps’s brief presence in the ‘70s goes unaccounted for. I think the report will turn out well and will be something I’ll be glad to have in my portfolio, as well as a good resource for a replacement Volunteer, should one follow in my place. Two interesting facts I learned in working on the report today were that, one, Santo Domingo did not have phone service until 1996 (other notable dates: a highway that could be crossed by non-donkey vehicles came in 1969, bus service with a permanent station in Santo Domingo on that highway in 1992, 24-hour electricity sometime during Ryan and Lilian’s service...so within the last two years), and two, that the library of the agropecuario high school has an awesome collection of stone and ceramic artifacts from the region.

In other news, I have come upon a feeling toward Santo Domingo best described as “cozy.” Even this weekend, when I wasn’t feeling well due to some antibiotic side effects, I still felt just fine to be here. I have those flashes when I wake up and open my eyes to see my room of, “Oh, I’m in My Bedroom” (/kitchen/office/library/bathroom/living room/laundromat). I’m starting to feel more or less (sometimes more, sometimes less) at home here.

Actually March 29th

Well. Easter vacation starts in six days, when we (Andrew, Tessa, Melissa, and I) will be headed to the beach in Piura for a few days. Some of you may have noticed that I did, in fact, just return from the beach a mere two weeks ago. That is just how this month is. I am having trouble getting my ganas to do a lot of things I could be doing at site right now, I think because I’m only ending up with a little over a week in site; it’s hard to even catch my breath before it’s time to leave again. I have my river cleanup and my first English class scheduled for this Saturday and Sunday. I need to plan the charla for water appreciation (which should not be that hard, World Water Day was not long ago and can be easily mushed thematically), and I just can’t inspire myself to do it. I also need to plan my first English class, which doesn’t include more than teaching greetings, numbers, and “One Little, Two Little, Three Little Indians.” Unfortunately, I cannot, for the life of me, remember the words to “One Little, Two Little, Three Little Indians.” Seriously. If that sounds silly, try to sing it in your head right now. I’ll bet well over half of you won’t get past the title lyrics. I guess I will have to pay the sol-per-minute for a five-second-delay phone call to Tessa to have her sing it for me. It was her idea to begin with.

Every morning (except Sundays) that I’m in Piura, when I walk past the bank, there is a mind-boggling number of people in line. It is truly mind-blowing, if only because I can never figure out for the life of me what they are all doing there. All government employees (including teachers, I think) are on direct deposit. There are ATMs. What are all these people doing in 50-yard line outside the bank every single morning? Well, Tessa and I became two of those people Monday morning. So I guess that answers about .02% of my question for that day. We were in the final stages of the stressful project of planning Easter vacation, which involved depositing money in the hotel’s bank account. Because that is apparently how things work here. The line actually wasn’t that bad (beyond the normal stress I have waiting in lines in this country. I swear, one of the greatest things about developed countries, most of them anyway, is the concept of personal space. That and free ice water at restaurants), plus there was this sweet bonus at the end where we walked past the “special needs” line, which turned out to be just mothers with babies and old people who wanted to sit in line. Just to give you an image of how vicious Peruvian lines are, we witnessed one old person accuse another of being “not special needs enough.” It’s like a freaking episode of South Park. But anyway, it was quite the home stretch, as Peruvian babies are generally adorable, and we got to stare at a differing set of them, unabashedly, for a good twenty minutes. In that home stretch, Tessa and I came to quite the realization: we like to stare at babies because they’re cute. Peruvians like to stare at us because we’re white, and moreover, Tessa has red hair. So when we walk past a mom with a cute baby, we stare at her, she stares at us, and EVERYONE’S HAPPY. Greatest symbiosis ever.

This weekend in Piura made me realize that there are some things about Peru that will probably always drive me insane. I’ve been good at having a thick skin to the catcalls in Piura, but I fear that the 1,000th Piuran to say “Ooo, mi amor!” or, the creepiest yet, “Ooo, que rico!” is just going to get smacked in the face, and I will be powerless to stop myself. I expect it when I wear something low-cut, and that is just the price I pay to be comfortable in the 95-degree Piura heat, but really, there is no excuse when I am in a button-down blouse and below-the-knee skirt. I wonder what Peace Corps’s policy is on face-smacking. It is probably not favorable, but then, who would denunciar me?

Also on the list of things that will always drive me insane is, as Brett put it when I told him this story, an over-emphasis on ends over means. As I mentioned, it is hot as hell in Piura (look on a map, and you will find me not far from the equator), especially on the second floor of our hostel. At 3 a.m. one night this weekend, our fan shut off. I didn’t notice, but I woke up to Tessa playing with the fan, eventually carrying it downstairs to exchange it for a working one. However, upon arriving downstairs, Tessa discovered that there was nothing wrong with the fan, it was that the electricity on our entire floor had been shut off. Why, you might ask? Because someone down the hall had their TV up too loud and would not answer the door when the manager knocked. So their solution to this problem was to indefinitely shut off the electricity on the entire second floor. Now, I know little about the hotel managing game, but I’m pretty sure there are about 14 solutions more reasonable than shutting off an entire floor’s electricity. To be fair, however, it did get that TV to shut up.

So it goes. Next entry, 30 kids learn why they shouldn’t throw trash in the river and how to say “Good morning.”