Fifty-Two in Peru

I have just turned 52 while on a nightmare trip to Peru. I need to count how many times I use the word NIGHTMARE in a given trip to Latin America and then weigh that against economic interests and so on and so forth. It has been months since I have posted a blog but fear not, I am not going to try and catch up. Suffice it to say that in November and December I was on planes that left the ground thirty-two times and visited three countries and I am getting a little tired of it all.

It was wonderful to be with family and friends during Christmas, and I brought my wife back to Peru with me in January to participate as godparents (padrinos), for a wedding. The wedding padrinos are something particular in Latin America and constitute a mix of witnesses and kind of co-parents to the couple. As a padrino one has the right to advise, scold stupid grooms and in Peruvian society, even knock them around if they behave as bad husbands... In my experience 99.99% of bad marriage behavior in Peru gets carried out by husbands. If women behave badly, it can usually be blamed on the husband starting it.

We got turned down by the Catholic priests as padrinos for the baptism of a friend's daughter for which we felt honest relief since there had been definite conflicts of conscience over the whole issue. At one point, I told the mom, “You do understand that we love Sofi but if you die or for some reason we are called upon to raise her, we don't know the first thing about Catholicism and we would raise her as a Mormon” "O! Si si, no hay problema! Es lo que hemos discutido desde el principio," her response.

The Priests had no problem having us as padrinos for the wedding but would not allow us to be godparents for the baby. We have been padrinos for weddings on numerous occasions but this one seemed more important because we traveled to be here for them. It was a blast too!

I took Julie up to the project and nearly killed her because of the altitude but she loved it and was impressed by the spectacular vistas. The road is nothing short of terrifying, and the rains are well underway producing a mass of chuckholes over the whole 350 kilometers of nasty highway and back roads. The trip from Arequipa in this time of year takes a good 11 hours over the worst roads in the world, one could argue. Julie commented that she used to think that Yauri, at four hours from Arequipa was remote but it is more of a suburb when compared with Huanacopampa. Life there is pretty much as it has gone on for centuries. They even still dress in traditional, home-spun clothing, live in the mud houses without electricity and cook over dung just like their great great great grandparents...

As part of our work with the communities we had foolishly offered to help with a couple of dire health cases, and one of more note was a little girl named Nayda who, at one and a half years old, still only weighs six pounds. Her mother's name is Lorenza, and we agreed to bring her to Arequipa to see what could be done to help her. It became clear on the way that the baby has Down's syndrome and many other problems as well. We stopped frequently for Lorenza, and bought Pampers and food in Yauri. We also took care of her and had a companion for her while in Arequipa since Lorenza does not speak any Spanish.

The doctors in the hospital determined right off that her problems were huge and that she would not get better without a serious time commitment and that she would have to stay months and undergo at least five surgeries. The hospital offered to take care of her stay and most of the costs.

When we put the baby in the hospital the guide, Juanita took Lorenza out for dinner, Lorenza cried and could not wait to go back and check the baby out. When she got back there, she completely unwrapped her and reviewed each and every finger and toenail and looked over every inch. The campesinos have been made hysterical by rumors that when one goes into the hospital, they take your blood. It does not stop there but they believe that they also take out your liver, heart and kidneys.

Anyway about day three of her stay, Lorenza began to tell Juanita that she needed to go home because she did not know who was feeding her children and it was likely that her husband, Santos had already dumped her over for her sister who lives in the same house. They did get Nayda up to about nine pounds before leaving for home, but without any of the necessary surgeries. She also appears to be blind. I think that she is not long for this life.

Anyway, when Lorenza got home she told everyone that she received bad treatment from the folks in the hospital and that they did not feed her and that we did not feed her on the way to Arequipa even though we had a huge lunch with her in Yauri. She commented that she did not know how to use a fork and we had someone cut her food for her. It disappointed me but I guess she could not go home and tell everyone that she thought her husband was cheating on her so she came home, or whatever was the root cause of her coming home. I was pretty mad!

We came back to Arequipa in time to participate in Teresa and Marti's wedding. We had a great time and they involved us in everything including manicures and Julie got her hair done, ala Peruana. It was great with a big side swoop. I loved it. They had an afternoon wedding, unusual here but it was great and got us out of there by 10:30 having begun at the salon at 8am. We got to dance and enjoy the whole Latino atmosphere that we have come to love. It was really fun.

On our way down from the project, we got a call from our daughter telling us that our beloved boxer, Bailey suffered an accident in the kennel and hanged himself. That set us up to talk with the girls who had stayed with friends. It was pretty terrible.

Because of pending projects, I had to come right back to Peru and celebrate my fifty second birthday in here. The deal is that no one knows how to have a party like a Peruvian and the office staff took me out to lunch while friends invited me to dinner and to have cake with them. I did not suffer on that end. I truly get treated like one of the family here. On this trip to Peru, I have made the trip to the project twice in ten days and have contracted another in a long string of parasites, hence the nightmare comment. Nothing new, just too much road time and familiarity with porcelain and other versions of the same, yet another bout with Atahualpa’s revenge…