Lost in Translation

This is most probably going to be the last entry to this blog, so I figured I should end with one of themany crazy stories I have...
Yesterday me, Erlinda (the de facto manager of Hearts Cafe and coordinator of our nutrition projects in the communities), and my friend Tuti (who is from Arequipa and was in Ollanta taking care of Luis' hostel) woke up before dawn to take off at 5am to go from Huarán, in the valley, up to Canchacancha at 4200m. We were supposed to meet a group of med students, who were one hour late and then all had to rush to the bathroom--great start for a 9km hike up 1000m!
Getting to Canchacancha was quite the ordeal: the horses that were supposed to carry the medicines didn't come (we later found out the owner had gotten druk and eventually showed up at 7), while waiting for a different horse Erlinda, Tuti and I started walking ahead of the van and when they reached us they didn't pick us up...so we walked all the way to Canchacancha thinking the med students were ahead of us, only to realise they had gotten stuck at one point where the road was blocked by trunks, and made it up to Canchacancha an hour and a half after us (with the token person with altitude sickness)--after Choquequirao this hike was a joke. ;)
The students then set up all their equipment to start visiting people, ony to realise that the people from the community speak only Quechua, the doctors spoke only English, and NO ONE spoke both English and Quechua...so for every patient there was a translator to Spanish, a translator to English, and a doctor. I bet the diagnosis were perfectly accurate...but to me it was actually surprising that people are as healthy as they are, given how hard their lives are.
In the end I'm taking about 10 people to a free clinic run by an American-Peruvian NGO here in the Valley.

This morning Sonia stressed me out one too many times, when it took me only 2 hours to make my point that I think it's only fair that if the women in Sacaca are doing lots of work to take care of tourist groups, they should be making some money from it. I eventually convinced her (with Erlinda's help), but when I made it to the internet cafe and realised I haven't gotten the interview I was hoping for in London, I decided I would be going back anyway. I bought my flight and I will be leaving Cusco on Friday, and reaching Torino or London (I still have to buy my last flight from Madrid) on Sunday. I will now stop dwelling on whether it was the right decision, as I bought the flight and there's no changing my mind. It's going to be a long trip, with a 12 hour lay-over in Mexico City--the temptation might be too great and I might just go for a tour...

Thank you to everyone who's ever read my blog, and thank you to everyone who listened to my endless phone and email monologues about my experiences here. And thank you to everyone I met here, who created my Peruvian story. I probably wouldn't change any of it.

Cuidense.

Going home soon...

I'm going back home soon--whateve home means, it is my family, my friends, all the things I've missed.
I may have found someone who will take over my job, which would be great to keep the projects going. I will talk to her tomorrow and then fix my flight back, through D.C., to London, and Torino. It's not an easy decision, but I need to set a date so I stop this schizofrenia of wanting to leave this minute and wanting to stay here years. I am very attached to this country I still don't understand (do you ever fully unerstand a place?) but that I love in spite of the (three) people who really disappointed me. I hope that when I look back on this experience I will be able to separate between how much I despise Maricarmen, and how beautiful the place is, and how much Sonia drives me crazy, and how much I admire and respect so many people I've met, and how much Luis hurt me, and how much I enjoy working with the communities, and how much I have learned from all of it.

Experience

"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want"
...is it too cynical to find that this quote perfectly applies to my Peruvian experience? My time here till now has been interesting and in every way different from what I would have visualised (had I visualised anything) when sitting at home in Italy in January. During the last 8 months I of course changed and learned and grew, I lost a camera, a cell phone and a lot of money, I lost my mind, my heart and my mp3 player--but it would be cliché to say that "I'm a different person" or that "this experience changed my life".
I'm uninspired to write, and I'm sure I'm uninspiring if you're looking for motivation to move to a developing country...I keep whining about no internet, cold shower, crazy bosses, bad food, dangerous roads and machistas, and I fail to mention the starry nights, the Inca ruins, the beautiful mountains, the cute-and-dirty children. Did I ever tell you how much I love working with communities, did I ever mention that there is this little town called Sacaca at 3900 m, which is beautiful and where I love to go and work with the people. Have I not told you they make amazing weavings and they drive me crazy with all their internal politics and fights? Have I told you how much I hate going to communities and distributing donations, I feel so uncomfortable being thanked (as if I were sacrificing myself to bring them clothes and coloured pencils), it is so awkward being in the position of having and donating to those who do not have. It's much better to work with people who try to manipulate me to get money and support.

Here are my mom's pictures from my parents' and Lorenzo's visit...
http://picasaweb.google.it/laura.palmucci

Besos

The things I miss

It's surprising the things you miss when you're away for a while.
Not in any particular order:
wireless internet, agnolotti al pesto, a functioning kitchen, indoor plumbing, not risking my life on the stone steps and wooden stairs going to my room, hot showers/a bathtub, Stefano (Lorenzo and my parents, but they are visiting now), skiing, owning a laptp, shopping--being able to find original puma shoes/nice shirts, mindless fashion magazines, Waterloo bridge, Kitty, horseback riding, dressing up, Anya, Faby, all my friends, good food, sleeping in, my grandmother, summer in the Northern hemisphere aka andare in bicicletta al Valentino a luglio, non-sketchy nightclubs, swimming pools, toilet paper in public bathrooms, wealth (as in being surrounded by it, as opposed to being surrounded by poverty).

This happens to me sometimes, and it has happened in every place I've lived--to miss people/places/things. I don't mean to sound whiney and I hope I don't. I love Ollantaytambo and I miss you a lot.

Favourite quotes (London here I come)

The last couple weeks have been "interesting", and I think London misses me as much as I miss her (yes Anya, her!).
I think I'm just going to report my two absolute favourite quotes from the last couple weeks, but they probably make the top ten of my life.

1) I was at my boss Sonia's house a few weeks ago, and we were discussing "these people" (aka Peruvians, with a strong high-class British derogatory inflection). Sonia was going off on the 347th rant about how (add strong high-class British derogatory accent here) "la palabra de un hombre de Peru" (=the word of a Peruvian man) is worthless, everybody is out to rip her off because she is a gringa/woman/old, etc. etc. So I dared say "I think if you're going to do social work you need to have some faith in people", to which she answered: "If we have such different philosophies we cannot work together. Let me know if you still want to work with me." WOW. Just Kidding.

2) I was dating a Peruvian guy who seemed completely nice and normal and I was so amazed that a mentally sane person would cross my way. After about a week I was getting to like him quite a bit and enjoying the whole dating thing, until Saturday night we are in a club in Cusco with a group of friends and he informs me that he really really likes me, but monogamy is just not for him. He's gotten used to the fun life and will never be satisfied with only one woman! (But he feels just terrible about it). HILARIOUS. He couldn't understand why I kept laughing.

As much as I have been and may keep meeting polygamous men in London, I am bound to have better luck with bosses--I don't think Maricarmen/Sonia levels of originality would be tolerated in London.

The relaxed Latin lifestyle

You've heard about the relaxed Latin lifestyle, right? No one stressed out, everything is always late, and people have lots of fun...well, in my Latin life my cell phone starts ringing at 7 am (probably it would start ringing earlier if I turned it on any earlier) with people stressing me out asking me to organize things, to find people, to buy stuff, to plan events, to solve problems, to coordinate groups, etc, etc, etc. I work on average 12 to 14 hours a day, theoretically 6 days a week. Today, Friday, is my day off. Let me tell you about it.

Last night I had to move all my stuff out of my hostel room and pack it into suitcases because they needed the room for tourists, so I slept in one of the staff's beds. So this morning I woke up at 6:30 am, having slept in my clothes and having gone to bed around midnight (having beed drinking beer with friends on the roof, with the most amazing view of the stars and the mountains). While I was brushing my teeth I got 2 missed calls (time 6:50 am). I am out of credit in my phone, which allowed me to not return the calls. I went to the plaza to meet the taxi driver in front of the restaurant and they informed me I needed to go to the internet cafe to print out the vegetarian menu for tonight. I ran to the internet, realised I've lost my USB, rewrote the menu, printed it, dropped it off at the cafe and got in the tazi to Sacaca, a community in the highlands about 1h30 from Ollanta. We got to Sacaca and picked up 3 children: Adriana, a girl who has been walking on crutches for 5 month because Pachamama (the mother Earth) dragged her down in anger--probaby her family didn't sacrifice enough to the Earth, Jose, a 6 year old boy with a congenital disease and also a problem with his palate and mouth so he doesnt speak, and Gerardo, a 16 year old who looks 10 with a horrible skin condition. We drove another hour and a half t the doctor in Cusco, taking also another woman, Jose Antonio's mother, who wanted to visit her child who is staying in a clinic for children with brain damage in Cusco. The doctor was really nice, but Sonia had told me he'd see the kids for free and instead he charged a lot of money for the visits and exams (we got discounts but it didnt really help). The kids all have serious problems, some treatable, some not, all way more expensive than their families can afford.

Then we went to the clinic where Jose Antonio is staying and if I thought nothing in Peru shocked me I have changed my mind. The clinic is wonderful, the children are very wel taken care of and it's virtually free...but the amount of suffering is more than I could handle. It must be really incredibly hard to work as a doctor, nurse, medical technician or any other job that is in so much constant contact with so much suffering.

I've since been running around Cusco doing errands and I decided I deserved a nice lunch at one of the very few good restaurants in town so I sat and breathed for half an hour and ate fish.

Now I need to go pick up the blood tests, ask the doctor if he can not charge us for at least one of the children, go back to Ollanta and probably work in the cafe tonight. I think if more staff were hired in the cafe I wouldn't tire myself to death, I wouldn't constantly get guilt trips about not being able to be in multiple places at once, and I'd actually be able to work on the projects....

Love.

Natural Dye Workshop

I haven't been writing much because I have been busy working and loving this place...
Last Saturday I went to Patacancha, a community relatively close to Ollanta, to a natural dye workshop. Weaving has traditionally been a big part of the Andean culture, but lately it had been lost because it takes a very long time and it is very costly. In the last few years, especially thanks to tourism, many communities are reviving the traditiona methods of dying sheep and alpaca wool boiling it in pots with local plants and rocks, and weaving by hand...and the results are gorgeous! It was really great to see how it's done and at the end of the day I smelled like a chain smoker because I'd been standing so close to the pots, trying to keep warm!
Here are some pictures:

ollanta and patacancha

Teaching English

I've been thinking about volunteer English teachers, is it realy a good idea to have people teach English to children who speak bad Quechua and worse Spanish, who can barely read and write at the end of elementary school, and who are not likely to learn English anyway, less to use it. isn't it better to have volunteers do art, theatre, music, environmental education, sport, or anything but English with them? Or is this condescending?

Damn questions that come with everything you do and everything you don't do, everything you consider doing or might do in development work. It's all a huge grey area!

I came to the conclusion that we'll do everything but English, in English. So if hte kids learn a few sentences as a side effect while doing art projects that's great, but it's not a good idea to have English classes... let me know what you think.

The gossip of the town (there's a lot of gossip, being such a small town)... but I will wait for that, for now. Juicy gossip is: Maricarmen closed her project because she realized volunteers are a lot of work and not a lot of money! Surprise! The coordinator she hired after me quit after 2 weeks, saying people in the area know him and he doesn't want to be associated with "mala gente" (bad people)...of course the version of the facts I got from her was slightly--totally--different!

And I love working with Laura and Danielle, I love their enthusiasm...the enthusiasm of Americans, which Italians are too often too cool for. If you come to volunteer with a community I'd hope you'd be excited about it!

Pictures, finally

canchacancha etc

Back in time

Thursday morning I got up at 4:30 am to catch a bus from Ollanta to Urubamba, and another bus to Huaran...to start the hike up to Canchacancha, at 4200m. The men and horses from the community came down to Huaran to take the chairs and materials we were donating to the kindergarden up. It takes the locals 3 hours to walk up from Huaran to Canchacancha, 9km and about 1500m up the mountain, right under the glacier. It took me and Erlinda 4 and a half...really, I'm quite proud of myself ;)
Erlinda works in the restaurant in Ollanta and manages the food projects with the communities and it was great to spend the couple days with her because our relationships developed and became much more positive than what it seemed initially.
Canchacancha...is like going back in time 1000 years, or 500 or 200 in the countryside anywhere in Europe--I don't think things ever changed much until the last century and a half.
Stone houes with wood and straw roofs and dirt floors. Only one room, in the house where I stayed they cooked on the right and slept on the left. They sit near the fire at night, but as it is so high there is very little firewood so the fire is made with sheep and llama dung and a few pieces of wood. No electricity but one oil lamp made out of a plastic bottle. No chimney so the entire roof is black with smoke and we breathed lots of smoke all evening and night (for the joy of the friend who let me borrow a sleeping bag and had recommended not to get it smokey...). One wash basin outside each house, cuys, a cat and a dog inside the house. Everybody works in the fields growing potatoes, and I am being literal when I say ALL they eat is potatoes: for breakfast, lunch and dinner. One of the ways to cook them is digging a hole in the ground and burning something in it so the earth gets really hot, then put the potatoes in and cover it up in earth for about 15 minutes. The potatoes are ready. In the valley they use hot stones and cook potatoes the same way. 10 of us spent the night in Justina's house, I slept on the floor on some sheep skins, wearing 5 layers of clothing, including a jaket, in a sleeping bag and with woolen blankets on top, and I was just fine.
(Unfortunately I can't upload pictures right now because my camera is out of battery, but I will soon.)
Yesterday morning we went to the community meeting and even though my Quechua is improving 'cos now I can say pot, man, woman, cat, eye, corn cob and a few other important things...I couldn't understand a word of what was being said. Then I read Living Heart's introductory letter and no one could understand me. Thankfully Erlinda and Justina were there to translate.
After the meeting and after eating some more potatoes Erlinad and I decided to run down the mountain to get back quickly...and we ran for 2 hours down the mountain. Is it surprising I'm sore today, considering there were no horses to carry the stuff on the way down so I was also carrying a sleeping bag and mat? (I'm in Cusco now 'cos I came to pick up Laura, a volunteer, leaving Ollanta at 5 am--I'm making a habit of getting up at 4:30 apparently!--and we got fully body massages today :) ).

Canchacancha is probably the most shocking place I've seen in Peru, but I want to point out something I was talking about with a Canadian volunteer last night: Canchacancha may be poor, it may be rural, but it is by no means remote or isolated. No community in the Sacred Valley or in the highlands is remote, they are all relatively close to very important tourist destinations, they all see tourists (in Canchacancha almost daily, and no one has ever thought of charging them to camp or to sell them trout and potatoes, or wood to make a campfire...), and they are all relatively well-aware of the world outside their community. Remote is the jungle, where you have to take a bus from Cusco for 10 hours and then a boat for 4 more, and then walk 2 more.

I am temporarily settled in a hostel in Ollantaytambo, the town has between 2000 and 2500 inhabitants, depending on where you draw the line. I am beginning to meet teh foreigners who live there and I am surprised to say I REALLY like it. The place is gorgeous, I really like the people I'm meeting, and what is most shocking is that I like living in such a small town (for now) because I like knowing the reality of it in a place where probably 9 out of 10 people are tourists passing by for a day or two.

Happiness, honestly :)

THIS is why I came to Peru. It seems obvious to say it now, or an easy explanation, but THIS is the destiny I must have been following. In only 2 weeks working for Living Heart I have regained all my enthusiasm, energy, faith in development work and in people in general.

If you came to visit me now I could show you all the Peru I love--for the first time I would be completely honest in telling you I love it. I could show you why the Sacred Valley is sacred, why one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen is the full moon rising between the mountains as you leave Ollantaytambo at night. I could show you the people in isolated rural communities: the enthusiasm in school children, the courage in women, the dignity in men, I could show you the generosity in so many tourists who walk into Hearts Cafe, and how I was welcomed by the people working there. I could show you the sun drawing a line parallel to the ground in the main square every afternoon at 5 in Ollanta, and the stone houses and and narrow streets. I could show you people who speak only Quechua and tell you the only complete sentence I know: Manan kanchu kolque (keeping in mind the spelling is completely invented, guess what it means? There is no money...).
(Of course, if you'd like, I could also show you the Peru I hate: the lies, the deceptions, people's very Latin way of thinking they're smart and can get around the rules/talk their way through, the constant attempts to rip off gringos no matter how obvious it is you're working for the local communities. Also: the music, and the way you risk your life every time you get on a means of trasportation--actually the constant dilemma between spending the double on a taxi who will drive like crazy risking your life but getting you to destination in a reasonable amount of time, or taking a safer bus but still drivven by someone who thinks overtaking behing bends or driving in the opposite lane ot avoid a hole is completely normal, saving money and wasting lots of time).

I am moving to Ollantaytambo tomorrow, the town is beautiful and I won't have to commute to get back to Urubamba at night. The place where I'll live is also nicer and it's supposedly livelier.
For the first time in months I am really happy, and for the first time since I arrived in Peru I love it and I think I might stay longer than originally planned.

Questions

It's official (because it's happened): I moved to Urubamba and am working for Sonia at Living Heart.

To be perfectly honest I don't know how I feel about any of this. Urubamba is small and not exactly lively. I live in a room with no furniture, no kitchen or cooking places, cold-ish shower...and it looks like 6 or 7 months of this might get quite lonely. I live with 2 Australian girls who are part of a group of 10 18-year-old gap-year students. Their organization seems to be ripping them off worse that Maricarmen's...and they are 18 and I can handle them only in small doses.

The work is interesting, there are lots of opportunities to set up new projects, coordinate with people who want to support us internationally, develop what is already set up, Sonia is very genuine and motivated...but I feel like I might have lost the enthusiasm that brought me to Peru to begin with, I'm demotivated and tired of being ripped off and lied to, partly disillusioned with development work, and partly I am coming to realise that this kind of life, so far away from my family and other points of reference, alianating in a way because I mostly meet people who are about to leave or people I can't relate to, well, this life might not be for me.

Maybe this experience is what I needed to realise it's not how I want to live my life, I am learning and growing and seeing and experiencing and thinking and changing and I will, in the end, probably hopefully maybe, come up with a conclusion about what I want and what I don't and where I want to be and what is important to me. And I am still asking myself the same question I was asking myself 4 months ago before leaving: why can't I be happy living a life like one of my best friends, who never moved from her neighbourhood, is married with two kids and gives me a sense of peace and stability every time I see her?

...now I'm going to Sonia's house to have roast chicken for lunch, and define how I'll be working.

Homage to Salman Rushdie

This is what Salman Rushdie says in his book "Shame":

"I, too, know something about this immigrant business [...]. And I have a theory that the resentments we mohajirs engender have something to do ith our conquest of the force of gravity. We have performed an act of which all men anciently dream, the thing for which they envy the birds; that is to say we have flown.
I am comparing gravity with belonging. Both phenomena observably exist [... b]ut neither is understood. We know the force of gravity, but not its origins; and to explain why we become attached to our birthplaces we pretend that we are trees and speak of roots. Look under your feet. You will not find gnarled growth sprouting through the soles. Roots, I sometime think, are a conservative myth, designed to keep us in our places. [...]
What is the best thing about migrant people and seceded nations? I think it is their hopefulness [...]. And what is the worst thing? It is the emptiness of one's luggage. I'm speaking of nvisible suitcases, not the physical, perhaps cardboard, variety containing a few meaning-drained mementoes: we have come unstuck from more than land. We have floated upwards from history, from memory, from Time. [...]
As for me: I, too, like all migrants, am a fantasist. I build imaginary countries and try to impose them on the ones that exist. I, too, face the problem of history: what to retain, what to dump, how to hold on to what memory insists on relinquishing, how to deal with change. And to come back to the 'roots' idea, I should say that I haven't managed to shake myself free of it completely. Sometimes I do see myself as a tree, even, rather grandly, as the ash Yggdrasil, the mythical world-tree of Norse legend."

So how to explain the sense of not-belonging to someone who's never experienced it?

Today I move into a new house in a new town: Urubamba and being ripped off by my landlady as a gringa charged 50% more than the proper price.

Living Heart

After a period in which it looked like I'd just made the greatest mistake in coming to Peru blindly, to work for an unknown organization, and I was questioning if I really wanted to do development work, really believed in any of it at all, when I thought I was just wasting time and money, and was thinking about moving back (to?)...now things are falling into place.

I bumped into a job with Living Heart (click to open website), an NGO run by an English woman, Sonia. She has a cafe (click to open website) in Ollantaytambo which is entirely non-profit and through which she finances nutrition, education, health and conservation projects. She seems very serious and professional and geniuinely dedicated, and the work looks a lot like the type of work I would have liked to do in the first place--except the project is a lot more solid as it doesn't depend on volunteers. I'd gone to talk to Sonia to see if she could receive volunteers from the Nick (the English organization who had originally sent Cristina from Bolivia to see Comunidades Unidas' project). When I told Nick I quit the job, he offered me to work for him and find another organization who could receive volunteers. So I talked to Sonia about this and she offered me to work for her as well, coordinating her projects and working in the cafe one or 2 days a week (which is gonna be really cool 'cos she has the best--western--food and coffee I've had in Peru, and lots of interesting people walk in and I'll wait tables and talk to them about the project and about life)...

I'll have to move to Urubamba, the capital of the Sacred Valley district. It's about an hour from Cusco, but I found a room with no kitchen and not-really-hot water, with 2 Australian girls who are teaching English and seem to know other foreigners in Urubamba (which is of course indispensable for survival :) ).

Changing direction

It's been a long time since the last time I wrote, lots of things have happened and I don't know where to begin to tell the story, or even if it's a story worth telling. I travelled to Puno, Lake Titicaca, La Paz and Arequipa with Simone, I quit my job, I'm about to start a new one--or if all goes well two new ones.

It took me over a month to begin to realise that Maricarmen had set up the volunteer project as a business, and about another month to realise I wasn't gonna change her or the way she ran things. It took me 2 days since I got back to Cusco from Bolivia to move out of her house (she told me to leave via email while I was travelling, and delighted my travel with daily rude emails), find a flat I'll share with 4 other people, and find 2 other paid jobs in Cusco.

I left the job because Maricarmen kept lying to me about the budget and the expenses. The final straw was after Crisitna came from Bolivia to see our project, and her boss Nick in London decided they'd send us volunteers but they wanted to see monthly budget report, and Maricarmen said this organization is not giving us any gifts and there is no reason why we should show them anything. I could go on and on abuot how manipulative she is, how she told me she knows I'm having a relationship with Simone and she is just waiting for proof to fire me, bacause it is completely unprofessional and (this is the best part!) I should ask my mother if it's professional to have a relationship with someone you work with (my parents met at work)...also, the quality of my work is very low considering I have a masters degree (absolutely true: how could I accept to work for someone who refused to show me a project description or a budget report and never gave me a contract). And here comes my favourite part...I came here to teach and not to learn, with the typical superiority of Europeans, while if she went to Europe she'd know how to work because she's travelled there, but she knows she'd be looked down upon like all Latinos in Europe (DEJA VU!!! I think I've heard something like that before!).

To all those people doing lines

You know the song Salvation by the Cranberries?
To all those people doing lines, don't do it, don't do it
Inject your soul with liberty, it's free, it's free

...to all those people doing lines, this is where (part of) it comes from.

Small impoverished farming jungle communities, where the economic opportunities include: working someone else's land in the burning sun and pouring rain, being paid by productivity and making between $3 and $4.50/day; construction work paid $4 to $6/day; backbreaking work moving stones to direct the course of the river, for a little higher salary; or if you're very lucky you might work in a little shop or restaurant. All work is temporary, all salaries are low and not constant, and (almost) everyone is poor/extremely poor (by IMF definition).

Otherwise you could take a taxi in the evening and go to the neighbouring town and work during the night stomping over coca leaves, the first step in making cocaine, for $30/day. It takes various kilos of leaves to make a few grams of cocaine. Great, so buying cocaine you're helping the Peruvian economy? Not quite.

Western governments have apparently decided to stop demand by destroying supply (brilliant!). So coca plantations, which constitute the livelihoods of many farmers in the jungle, are being sprayed with chemicals from US helicopters, and destroyed. Coca has always been part of the Peruvian and Andean culture in general, and for the most part it is not grown to produce cocaine. The chemicals used to destroy the plantations have destroyed other plants as well, and have caused cancer in people living there.

Cocaine, produced in the Peruvian jungle, is carried to different places (Bolivia, Brazil, and others) to be exported. Carriers are also well-paid, but given the risk involved, you must be pretty desperate to accept. The bus I took back to Cusco last night was stopped twice by policemen looking for cocaine: the search was the most approximate I've even seen: they got on the bus without dogs and with a couple flashlights, took down a few plastic bags and confiscated a couple bags of coca leaves that people were carrying to Cusco to chew or to make tea with. I doubt there was cocaine on the bus I was travelling on, but the night before I'd watched a horrible TV programme about the "successful" operation of a police unit against drug dealers. It showed a helicopter carrying thousands of dollars of cocaine money, being embushed when it landed, the two people on it being dragged down and shot dead as they tried to escape, and the money taken out of the plane. Aside from the close-ups of the two dead men, this "successful" operation involved the death of two poor men who were obviously not the drug lords the money was going to, and everything will continue as usual.

Story of a woman

A few days ago I went to my friend Alicia’s very simple wooden house, to confirm that she, her husband, and her daughters would come to eat the Italian dinner I had promised them. I knocked and opened the door (which doesn’t close and is tied with a string to a metal wire doorknob), calling her name. Her 7 and 9-year-old daughters came running to me from the little shop next door, saying their mother was gone and so was their father. They told me their parents had fought that morning, their father had beaten their mother, and then they had both left and hadn’t been back all day. They said their mother was hurt and they she was at the hospital; I knew she wasn’t because I’d spent the afternoon there with Simone, repainting the wall. The two girls Kaitlyn and Vivanda proceeded to tell me that their father is bad, bad, and he always beats their mother and had tried to beat them too. Their father is a guy my age with a smile permanently set on his lips, who works for Maricarmen and struts around Pilcopata in a bright red motorcycle. They said their father doesn’t want to eat what their mother cooks and makes them throw it away [one of women’s primary role is to take care of their husbands, refusing the wife’s food is a great offence, especially in families, like this one, where it is scarce]. The girls then told me their mother had come back the previous night soaking wet, they didn’t know from where, and that she often tells them she wants to die, and a few weeks before she’s drunk gasoline and ended up in hospital very sick. I asked them about school (and found out the younger daughter will start kindergarden as soon as her parents buy her the 5 notebooks she is required), and if they had food for dinner. They said no and I said I’d go back and bring them some food. When I returned to their house half an hour later, I knew from one of the workers that Alicia and her husband would be there. I arrived and asked Alicia to come out and go for a little walk. She came out wearing a long-sleeve turtleneck shirt and long pants (clearly the right clothes for this weather), saying: “I’m fine…why? Of course I’m fine, nothing happened”, as she limped and massaged her shoulder blade. [A week later she still had bruises on her arm]. Turns out she's reported the beatings to the police station repeatedly, with no result, and she wants to move out with her daughters and start running a little shop...but where? how? HOW?

And painting the fence of the health centre with Simone, talking about this and that, an idea began to develop for a project targeted to women victims of domestic violence...

In the mean time my journalistic carreer started, check out my first article on Diverse Traveller (click to open).

Silvio's back: part III

If you were here in Pilcopata with me, living in a hostel on the main road, surrounded by the no more than 10 brick houses in a town made of tin-and-wood barracks, you’d also be wandering where does the wireless connection I’m using come from…

Through this (very slow) wireless connection, Simone and I found out that Berlusconi- Bossi, unsurprisingly- surprisingly, are going to lead the 64^th Italian government in almost 63 years of Italy’s history as a republic. People and countries get the governments they choose and deserve—but I am upset, and fear that at some point the Great Mystery of Italy’s functioning in spite of half a century of bad governments might end. The BBC is probably one of the most generous foreign media towards “Mr. Berlusconi”, defining him a “corrupt buffoon”. Most Italian voters have probably never read a foreign newspaper, and I have probably read too many (at least compared to how much I read Italian newspapers). It’s easy to be a foreigner everywhere, because it somewhat detaches you from the responsibilities of citizenship; it is also easy to emigrate (as a highly skilled immigrant at the top of the socio-economic ladder—which is the type of emigrants our badly-governed Italy is increasingly donating to the better-governed rest of the EU). It’s also easy to criticize your country from the opposite side of the world, when (for reasons partly beyond your control) you couldn’t even vote in the last election, and thus are fully responsible for its outcome.

The reason partly beyond my control why I didn’t vote: I am in Peru with a tourist visa, and all my efforts to get a work or missionary visa failed. As a result, I am working illegally, I cannot open a bank account, I can’t register with AIRE (the agency for Italians living abroad) and therefore couldn’t register to vote. And next week I’ll go to Bolivia to renew my visa (get another 90-day tourist permit): I’m going with Simone and we’re planning to go to Lake Tititcaca, the floating islands, La Paz and maybe Arequipa (in Peru) on our way back. It’s going to be a 5-day trip, we think, and it might be the holiday I need.

A job like any other

This may come as a shock to you ripped-jeansed, faded-t-shirted, dreadlocked “alternative”, but development work is not a mission, it’s not a calling, nor a vocation; it’s just a job. A job you choose because you like it, because you are passionate about it, because you believe in it, or maybe because you can make good money in development careers, because you’re looking for adventure or want to see the world, because it’s varied and offers lots of opportunities for growth and change throughout your career.
As the daughter of two doctors who’ve explained to me and my brothers and to others, endless times, that being a doctor is no mission, it’s just a job, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised to find myself in the same situation: having to explain over and over, that development work is, also, a job like any other.
Here is the risk to fall in the typical attitude of many professionals: thinking that their own profession is the morally highest, most challenging, and most important in society. (Last year I had a flatmate who was an architect and firmly believed in the superiority of architecture over any other discipline or work. One evening I met a few of his colleagues and asked them if they shared this view, to which they answered: “Do you know how many architects it takes to change a light bulb?”—“I don’t know…”—“Just one, he stands holding the light bulb and waits for the world to turn under him”…please apply to the profession of your choice).
What I’m trying to say is: I like my job (most of the time, and I’m lucky), I believe in people (I can’t imagine doing any type of social work well if you don’t), I try to work as best I can and I am committed to what I do. And I see the exact SAME passion and commitment in my brother Stefano, studying and working in finance (investment banking the new “mission”?), and in my brother Lorenzo, the future Architect (but then we know architects…). We are all so into our “fields” that we spend endless afternoons with friends discussing development/finance/architecture, we read about anything related to our field, we find out about prominent people in the profession and how they work, we apply our interests and knowledge to the reality around us all the time. And there is a morality in this, which is not social work is moral while the private sector is immoral (imagine a world without businesses). Simply, everyone has the moral duty to do their job to the best of their abilities—and the more life hands you, the more you have the responsibility to give back, by developing and cultivating your talents and passions and applying them in society (in this respect my brothers and I have lots to give back).
But let me move away from talking about my brothers, you might think that my family sample is distorted by genetics of upbringing. I remember countless conversations in London in which my friend Fabiana, who studied development and worked in Benin and Burkina Faso (compared to Africa, work in Latin America is a joke), tried to convince people that development is a job like any other. Most of the time she failed. People often think they’re complimenting us development workers, telling us our job stands on a higher moral ground than the baker or the lawyer…but actually they’re making our life harder. When people tell me development work is a mission and a good development worker has a very different approach to work than a good business person or chef, they often imply a good development worker should sacrifice his/her life for their job. They also imply they should not care about money, make up, prestige, high-speed internet, wearing clean clothes/high heels/jewelry. I have lived in a house with no running water and showered out of a bucket, I have lived in a house with people with whom I had no common languages and tried to learn their language, I have lived in houses where we ate the same (deep-fried, over-sugared) staple foods every day, where we drank dirty water and washed our clothes in a stone sink with one cup of water and hung them on barbed wire to dry, houses where if it had been my life, as a woman, I would have been confined to the cooking-and-cleaning and attending-to-the-men. Now (in Cusco) I live in a gorgeous 3-floor house with hot showers, high-speed internet and a washing machine, I wear make-up and blow-dry my hair. Am I doing my job any worse than I was when my living conditions were more basic? Or would I do a better job if I didn’t have those comforts? Or am I in the wrong sector because I enjoy wearing skirts and talking to my family on skype every few days?
(Just in case you’re wondering, I’m not doubting myself, the answer to all these questions is: definitely not).
Most the people who really sacrifice their life to development work, living in absolute poverty and giving up all earthly possessions, are religious missionaries (hence the mission—calling—to live a certain type of life). I always think about the priest in City of Joy who goes to live with the poor in a slum in Calcutta, or Alex Zanotelli, an Italian missionary priest who lived and worked in slums in Nairobi for 12 years (and wrote a great book titled “Korogocho”). I admire and respect their work, but development workers are no missionary priests. At night they like to go out and invest $5 in a dinner and drink, thus contributing to the economy of the country where they are more than if they starved in a slum.

Pilcopata's revenge aka its attempts to make me like it

Back in the jungle and I feel like my life is a videogame and I just passed on to the next level of difficulty: only one eye! Last Thursday night as I was taking off my contact lenses I dropped one and could not find it; my eyesight is really bad and I need to have my contact lens remade in Italy, mailed to Cusco and, in the fortunate event in which it would get there, go and get it, because it would really be pushing my luck to have it sent to Pilcopata (my USB was given to a woman who was supposed to come on Saturday and arrived this morning). [My first investment when I move back to Europe and begin to work will be eye surgery, to solve all these problems for the rest of my life].
The Peruvian jungle is stunningly gorgeous and the town of Pilcopata is impressively ugly. The trip here took us 10 hours in a bus with bad breaks and two exhausted drivers, a rain storm chasing us and a landslide that blocked the road for 2 days right after we arrived. I traveled here with Simone, the volunteer, and two Italians working in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Cristina and Marco, who came to evaluate our project and see if we can cooperate and if Cristina’s boss in London wants to send us volunteers. It looks like she approved the project, if we can overcome a few technical difficulties such as my (as yet) inability to be here and in the Sacred Valley simultaneously.

Let me tell you a bit about the interesting town of Pilcopata and its inhabitants. We arrived and were told that Simone could go and live in the rooms in the parish church: I went to see them and found out the priests had traveled to Cusco and the rooms need to be repainted and restructured completely before any volunteer can live there. Yesterday the priests got back and I see what may have caused the planning difficulties—consider that in Pilcopata there is no cell phone reception, no private land lines, and none of the people I work with use Internet, which leaves two possible systems of communication: 1) call the public phones and ask the person answering to pass the phone to the person you want to talk to or deliver a message, or 2) have a letter hand carried and delivered by someone traveling here.
Now consider my (failed) attempts to communicate with the priests before coming:
A few weeks ago I had Fredy carry a letter to the priests. He says he delivered it, the priest says he never got it.
Maricarmen says the priests called a couple weeks ago saying the rooms were ready for the volunteers; the priest today told me he’d called saying they were not ready and there was still a lot of work to do.
I’d called repeatedly asking to speak to the priests or to tell them to call me back, and never received any call. Simone and I had to introduce ourselves to Maricarmen’s father about 6 times during the first couple days here, till we decided he must be senile. He them told me that he is actually almost blind. He is also the person in charge of answering the public phones and delivering messages. Lots of things suddenly make sense…

Also, Maricarmen insisted I go and live in her house in construction in her land a bit out of Pilcopata. I’d told her before coming that it scared me to go and live there because it’s dark and isolated, but she insisted it was safe [“Nobody has ever been raped in Pilcopata”(…)]. When I arrived the house was full of mud, wood and other construction materials, the second floor is completely missing, there is no running water, electricity, furniture or windows…but other than and the fact there are snakes it’s ready to live in it. I told her it wasn’t ready and after accusing me of spending lots of the project’s money because of being scared to live in her house and changing plans at the last minute, finally last night she agreed that “of course” the house is not ready, after all her construction workers had been telling her for almost a week.

Things here are quite slow and it’s interesting that a volunteer coordinator lived here for almost one year because no one knows about the project. Working here is not easy because the school director is very rude, the priests don’t have the money to buy the materials to restructure their parish, and it’s going to be very difficult to find host families because people are overall much poorer than in the Sacred Valley. But at least the doctor is young and very active and there are 4 medical students doing their internships here.

You need to have reached a sort of inner peace to enjoy life in Pilcopata (and it helps if you like hot weather), you need not to be after gorgeous Argentine men (or any other gringo) and preferably not care much about any of the following: social life, shopping, night life, winter clothes, cultural events, nice looking hair or overall nice looks. Admittedly I am very much into most of the above—especially the Argentine men, and I am incredibly disturbed by how horrible my bangs look!—and yet I don’t see the contradiction between that and my wanting to do development work. Is there one? Here there is lots of time to do non-internet-requiring work, read (currently reading Salman Rushdie's "Midnight Children": brilliant!), think, write, and movies are extremely cheap, Simone and I bought 19 movies for 18 soles (4euros) and have been watching them (movies watched since arrival in Pilco: Motorcycle Diaries, Children of Heaven, Ratatouille, Shreck 3, The Simpsons).

Yesterday we met Sofie, a girl from Belgium doing an internship in the hospital here, and we told her to come and eat pizza with us tonight, made by Orisson (the guy who is currently renting and running Maria's hostel where Simone and I are living) in the brick oven…definitely good! She came and she’s very nice—we had a nice evening with her and a tourist from New Hampshire, who spent some time around Lake Tititcaca studying birds, and (not surprisingly) answered all of our conversation attempts with one word answers.

Living the gringo life

Timing's never been my thing, but I'm beginning to get sick of my horrible timing! (Or maybe it's all part of my Personal Legend). Tomorrow morning I am leaving for the jungle for an unspecified period of time between 10 and 40 days. I'm not gonna hide I'm not looking forward to it: the heat, humidity, and insects are not for me. I finally understand perfecty all the people coming from hot climates complaining about the New Hampshire cold non-stop. When the climate doesn't fit you everything becomes so much harder! Also, I'd just began to enjoy the Cusco good life, aka meeting gringos and going out with them. Of course most of the people I met are tourists staying for a few days (adding to my horrible timing-related distress!), but a few are here learning Spanish or volunteering and staying a few months. It's been fun to go out to eat and drink, even though with my "salary" (if you dare call it so) I can't even afford a quiet gringa social life in Cusco.

Cristina, the woman from the Bolivian/ British organization that might want to work with us is here visiting the project. Tomorrow I am travelling to Pilco with her, her boyfriend and Simone. Tonight I met Doug, a volunteer who will be living in Pilco in May and June.

So let's hope lots of interesting griunguitos come by Pilcopata...the one in the picture is me--now, I'm sure you can picture me in the jungle! I miss weaing skirts, I had a dream the other night that I was home and looking for a skirt in my closet!

My Personal Legend

School is so uncontroversial, and doesn't cause sleepless nights thinking about how to solve problems! Granted I don't have a typical job, here is an attempt to compare school vs. work stress levels: LSE exams had me dealing with anxiety attack eating Covent Graden cookies with friends, while the work problems here have me awake at 5 am reading The Alchemist. And sometime between a 10pm headache and 5am insomnia I realise (or talk myself into believing) that Peru is part of my Personal Legend (read the Alchemist if you haven't).

Because Huycho is beautiful at 6am and at sunset and every other time of day,

because rain in the distance in the Sacred Valley is magic,
because of the genuine enthusiasm in Huayllabamba's school children at the news they'll have a volunteer teaching English,
because of the way the Machigenga know their river and their jungle
and because of the peace in the afternoon at Palotoa,
because of Rosa's trust in me and Frida's friendship
and all the women dealing with and fighting against machismo every day,
becuase of the sound of rain on a plastic roof,
because of the school directors' cooperation
and the host families treating me like a daughter,
because of Orisson's strenght and courage,
because of the volunteers who believe in what they're doing,
because I believe in what we're doing and in the people we're working for,
and because everything I learn will stay with me for ever.
This is why it is all worth it, and I know I am fulfilling my Personal Legend.

All simply because I have a family and friends who know--that (living in India for 6 months or) working in the Peruvian jungle is not, in reality, as romantic or as fascinating as it sounds.

Side note: Simone's host family refuses to belive we are not dating, so when I called to let him know I could not buy his ticket to Machu Picchu because they only sell it to the person going and he'd have to come to Cusco to buy it, the message delivered to him by his host father was: your love Erica called to know how you're doing.

The birthday / Easter weekend

This year my 24th birthday and Easter combined in one weekend. Friday night I went out with Simone and we socialized with two American women and their brichero friend at the Irish Pub, and then we went to another pub and a club. You will forgive me if I'm discouraged by the men I met during the night: 1) the brichero with the Americans, 2) the nameless guy I froze and convinced to leave in 10 seconds in the club, 3) the perverted architect from Arequipa who's obviously met lots of easy gringas and whom I would have punched in the face if it didn't disgust me to touch him, and 4) the artist/writer who just opened a gallery in San Blas and was interesting to talk to till he decided to hit on me and the conversation became so boring I went home.

That night I slept about 2 hours, because Nico and his friends woke up at 6:30 and involved the whole house in their awakeness.

My birthday was a weird and uneventful day, made of cleaning, walking around local markets where they sell whole pigs and donkey heads, lunch at home and sleeping the whole afternoon to recover from the night before. In the evening Simone and I went to dinner with the two American women to this place they loved (for mysterious reasons): we had sandwiches and got sick.

On Easter Sunday I went to church at the cathedral: the tackiness of the interiors of the churches in Cusco is really something! Statues of bleeding suffering saints, dressed in velvet and golden 15th-century-Spain outfits, massive gold and silver altarpieces and dark painting of martyr saints, all topped by the priest screaming from the altar a Medieval-style sermon. The most disturbing thing, to me, was the military procession, complete with soldiers in uniforms and machine-guns, bands, slogans and firecrackers, right in front of the cathedral during the Easter service.

Overall I find the religion here quite idolatrous: like most uneducated people they have an admirably strong faith, but based more on the adoration of saints and the belief in all sorts of miracles and apparitions. I bought a cross made of tweeds and berries, but most importantly with lots of garlic attached to it to keep away the evil eye. We also threw red petal from the balcony at statues of Jesus and the Vergin Mary in procession: the flowers represent the blood of Christ and they are the same that were used for some Inca ritual of sacrifice. Of course any religion can be interpreted and practiced at different levels by different people, and there are always people who accept dogmas and others who question everything, but you will understand, in the midst of all this pagan-ness, my disappointment at the lack of Easter eggs!

You should hear me speak Italian, my Italian is so good that only my greataunt Alba and a few other originally perceptive people can detect the American accent which I have lost even in English. Only when you start talking to me about italian music, TV, or places in Turin it comes out that I'm faking it! Or so seem to think all the Italians I've met in the past couple years.

On one side it freak me out to think that, for no apparent reason other than my mother's genes, I have turned myself into the cultural hybrid which is a foreigner everywhere, especially in my own country. On the other hand I have reached the intolerance of the over-exposed: different cultures are so interesting and fascinating...till you have to deal with them. (Just think of how hard it is to deal with people from your own culture...). I've become the kind of person who is forever grateful for the places non-places, where western-style multiculturalism is the pervasive culture.

Los 12 Platos

Peruvian tradition wants that on Good Friday (or Thursday) all families spend the day at home preparing 12 traditional dishes, and eating them. So this morning we went to the market, where all the food had changed to adapt to the holiday, and bought the ingredients for our lunch. Since this is Semana Santa, or Holy Week, you don't eat meat, and the 12 platos are to commemorate Christ's Last Supper and they are 11 for the apostoles and one for Christ himself.

Shopping for the 12 platos

Most people only cook about 4 or 5 dishes, because it is quite expensive to prepare so much food, but we had almost all of them. There are no set rules on what you're supposed to cook, but most people prepare something like what we had: 1) a soup of vegetables and shellfish, 2) a second course of pumpkin and fava beans to eat with white 3) rice, 4) another dish made with fries, tomatoes and codfish, 5) another soup made with potatoes, 6) arroz con leche (sort of rice pudding) with 7) masamorra--a purple sweet sauce with berries and apples, 8) empanadas (a flat biscuit), 9) corn cake, 10) homemade peaches and pears in syrup... and to reach #12 we had merengues and other biscuits. Plus wine and orange juice...intense!
It was really nice and we had Maria's friend, her son and daugher over.

I needed today's break to relax from the (work and touring-related) stress of the last few days. It looks like we're going to leave the the Andean food project aside for a while, until the volunteer project is well-established. I'm not working for the World Bank but in the last few days I've remembered so many times Dr. Hall's words: "Say what you think now that you're in an academic environment, because when you'll be working often you won't be allowed to"...right.

On Tuesday I had a meeting with the primary and kindergarden teachers from the 5 communities in the Valley. Only 2 elementary school and one kindergarden directors showed up--because the mayor had sent out a letter notifying them about the meeting that same morning. Note to self: avoid politicians whenever possible, but make them think they are central to any action. Anyway the teachers are excited about receiving volunteers and will help me identify host families.

Here are pictures from last weekend's tour of the Valley and trekking.

Touring and Trekking

P.S. I am infinitely gratefuly for internet, MSN, gmail chat, skype and all the people I talk to every day--it would be so much harder without you :)

Naivety

Last week I went to look for the Mayor of Calca and found someone substituting him while he's away. This man owns a piece of land along the main road of the Sacred Valley circuit, and he is interested in using it for the Andean Food Product project. (Side note: his brother teaches Economics at the University of Turin. Small World?). The same problem of Inca walls exists there, but I found out you can build simple construictions (made of wood and earth) close to the walls. Also, I'm assuming he'd want to run it as a buisiness and make a profit (we need to meet with him, his wife, Maria and Geoff to discuss). If it is run as a business there would be a few problems: 1) I am quite uninterested in managing a business, even if it might have a positive social impact; 2) We couldn't ask for funding to the FAO like I was planning, or an other international organization; 3) We would have to pay 22% taxes to the national government. We'll see where this goes...

On Friday Simone and I went with Geoff and his friend John on a tour of the Sacred Valley by car and it's the only reasonable way to tour. We saw Sachsaywaman Q'enqo and Pisac. The only problem with these Inca ruins is that no one knows what they were, they probably all served as defensive structures, sacred sites and residential areas--just like modern cities. Pisac is absolutely stunning, but what is more stunning is the view. Tell me if you've seen any place as beautiful as the Sacred Valley when it rains: it's poetry made tangible, with clouds rushing though creating an infinite variety of greys and greens, and lighting in the distance. It's not just aesthetical beauty, there is a magical athmosphere to it, which compensates for so many things. Part of my growing cynicism: when people asked me what I liked most about Nicaragua, without hesitating I answered: the people! To the same question about Peru, with the same certainty I answer: the mountains.

This weekend Maria, Geoff, his friend John, Simone and I went trekking: it was a trial run, and it was obvious. The fact I had such a hard time dealing with the organizational difficulties probably shows how much more of a gringa I am than I was in Nicaragua. Obviously, as during the 4 years which have passed since then I have developed my personality almost entirely in gringoland (even with limited exposure to the Italian disorganization). We were supposed to leave at 9am and left at 2.30pm: first we were late because this is Peru, and then the two malnourished mules and their very drunk owner could not carry all our stuff (tents to sleep and 2 tents to cook, sleeping bags, mats, tables, chairs, pots, pans, enough food to feed an army for a year, stove, portable shower, tablecloth, cups, glass glasses, saucers, coffee maker and many other things you wouldn't guess you'd need on a 2-night trekking). Eventually Onorio came back with 3 mules and it took a woman (his wife Julia) to loads them and set off. We hiked half an hour to their house, and stopped for lunch. Then we set off to the lake Black Lake without waiting for Onorio, so we got lost, lost time waiting for him, and rushed up as it was getting dark when we realised there is more than one path to the lake. It's amazing that people live in isolated houses all over the mountains, and they walk up and down every day with their animals or to go to the villages. We eventually caught up with Onorio and the mules but didn't make it to the lake before dark so we ended up setting up camp in the dark and on a slope, sliding to the bottom of the tent all night long. I must admit the pasta with "pesto" (which was actually a spinach sauce) we had for dinner was delicious, and still I wouldn't bring it camping. Same for the pancakes we had for breakfast, bus as they say "when in Rome...". Yesterday morning we hiked up about 15 minutes and arrived to a beautiful "valley" at 3600 mts with a lake in the middle and a waterfall falling into it. Stunning. We set up camp, Simone and John couldn't resist the calling of the lake and dove in, only to rush out after 2 seconds. Then we hiked up to the Yellow Lake, behind the waterfall at 4200 mts. Unbelieveable: you could see all the valley, the mountains, and the valley behind them. We were so lucky to have the only 2 days without rain in the last couple weeks: we could see the rain on the other side of the Valley, but it didn't reach us. Last night we slept by the lake (turns out the glacier where we were supposed to sleep the second night was 5 mountains and a few days of hike away), and this morning we came down. The place was gorgeous and I wouldn't even be irritated about the complete disorganizationa and lack pf practicality (which I pointed out, since this is supposed to be a trial for tourist groups), if I hadn't been paying for the trip. [My pictures coming soon...]

Today in Cusco there were huge processions for the Lord of the Earthquakes. It was so crowded I could see in the distance a crucifix being taken around the city and a band palying, but I couldn't make my way through the crown to see it properly.