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.