Kind Of Playing It Fast and Loose With the Word “Interesting”

I have since had two meetings of the environmental club, with the following results:

- In total, nine teenagers showed up to the first meetings. Not bad.
- The catch: they are all girls. So we rolled with it, and declared it a no-boys-allowed-except-for-when-heavy-lifting-is-require club.
- It’s probably pretty good that no boys came, given that the name of the club was declared, as of the first meeting, to be “Club Pachamama,” after the Quechua word for Mother Earth. I should note that “Mother Earth” is one of five Quechua words I know, along with “five,” “eight,” “sun,” and “totally delicious meal cooked underground (rough translation).” So far, any attempts to form whole sentences with those words have been…a matter of creativity.
- For all the creative, fun activities that I presented on the first day as things we might do, the votes all went to hikes and cleanup campaigns. Fair enough, I like hiking, even though the place they decided they want to go to is an hour’s hike away…along the main road. Also, the first river cleanup was fun, it will be even cooler (and dare I say, sustainable) to have teenagers organizing it.
- Our club might as well be called “The Mother Earth and Apples to Apples Club.” On the second meeting, I brought the copy of “Apples to Apples” that Brett translated into Spanish awhile ago, not sure it was going to work out, given the creative thinking involved. For those of you who have never played “Apples to Apples,” first of all, why the hell not, and second, here is a summary: there are adjective cards and noun cards. Everyone holds a hand of seven noun cards, and each round, an adjective is played in the center. Everyone but the judge puts a card in the middle that they think best matches (ironically or not) the adjective card, and the judge determines whose was the best match. The person wins a point, and the judge changes. I just like any game where you have to compare “Helen Keller” and “Elephant Stampede” along the metric of “Smelly.” Brett sent me the Junior’s edition, so there wouldn’t be many cultural clashes, but just to make sure, I had them sort through the cards first to see which words didn’t make sense to them. Interestingly, the words that did not translate to rural Peruvian teenagers included rocking chairs, mustard, canoes, garages, bacon, poison ivy, beach balls, attics, and (of all things) piñatas. De todas maneras, the game went awesomely. The girls loved it. The three things I loved most about it were: one, it made people think creatively (something sorely lacking here); two, it made the girls value everyone’s opinion, not just their friends’; and three, it made everyone speak up, not just the outgoing girls. They agreed to the terms of the hike only when I offered to bring the game to the waterfall destination.
I kid you not, that game of “Apples” was the most interesting thing that has happened to me in weeks.

Other than that, Rachel and I have been graced with the company of Daisy, a Piuran woman who works in Santo Domingo from time to time with an NGO that works in gender equity. She’s definitely a breath of fresh air, but sometimes the clashes we have with her about being in SD and doing development work get interesting. To be fair, any other country’s poverty is more glamorous than one’s own. I’m perfectly comfortable here, in the rural Andes, but if you told me I had to spend two years in rural Appalachia, my nose might crinkle. She’ll say disparaging things about having to come up here from the city, and how sometimes she’ll pay S/.80 for a motorcycle ride to Piura (the bus is S/.10) just so she can get out of here faster. Rachel and I were trying to figure out what bothers us about this, since we certainly do our fair share of complaining about this place, and I think we realized that when it comes down to it, we like it here, and we’re really happy that the U.S. government pays us (albeit not a whole lot) for the opportunity to work here. I also sort of resent more cosmopolitan Peruvians assuming we, as Americans, share their views about life in the sierra. Just because we’re used to more creature comforts doesn’t mean we’re dying to get out of here.

The other source of excitement in SD was Rachel’s weaving association’s inauguration party for the new building they acquired, soon to be the workshop/store. Hurray for them. Also, hurray for me actually enjoying myself at a Peruvian party. The basic structure for Peruvian parties, as I know them, is
Chairs are arranged bordering the outside of the room.
Music is played excruciatingly loud, so there are no conversations.
The men (and the occasionally lady) quickly get themselves drunk.
Eventually, people start dancing, strictly in couples, but no eye contact is made, and no one smiles.
People stay until 4 a.m., seemingly against their will.

The parties are, in a word, joyless.

But this party was cool. Almost none of the husbands showed up, so it was just wholesome girls-dancing-with-girls fun. It was also held mid-day, so there wasn’t that tension of people knowing they need to pace their fun because they’re going to be there for 6 straight hours. Rachel gave an excellent speech in a special-made purple silk campo dress, which really cannot be recreated without photographs.

And then I took a nap.