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