Bullfight & Drunks

I love the lyrics to in the Grateful Dead song Truckin’:

Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me;
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me,
What a long, strange trip it's been.

The other day I had one of my more spectacular series of experiences since coming to Peru. I had arranged with a group of nurses to go and see a project to improve living conditions of the campesinos.

To start with I am in the middle of nowhere 12 hours from Arequipa, 6-8 hours from Cusco and 7 hours from Abancay. Near the town of Challhuahuacho we have been working for three years on a mineral exploration project. I work primarily with the native population trying to gain and maintain social license to do our work.

About a half hour away from our spot is the town of Tambulla a scenic burg of about 1000 inhabitants with its own medical post on very rough roads.










Beyond Tambulla the roads are worse to impossible, parts only accessible in 4X4 Low Range. I got to Tambulla at 4pm as arranged with Savi, the head nurse and picked her up with two assistants, Linda and Teofilo. We happened to have chosen the day of a bullfight in Tambulla and by 4pm many people were feeling little pain except for the woman who got gored by one of the bulls. Most having consumed inhuman quantities of a licorice smelling concoction of anise and pure ethyl alcohol from the pharmacy had become pretty tottery.

As we passed by slowly every possible person attempted to catch up to hitch a ride with us but we had no room. We made it past the ring full of bulls and the hills were covered with people in the most spectacular dress imaginable.













As we made it past the teaming masses a handful of folks had begun their trek home. Obviously they stuck out their thumbs for my consideration to get them to their homes. I was full and had to decline but one elderly man kindly exclaimed “Hunta” (we are full) and kicked the truck as I passed. I slowed thinking something else had happened but my passengers urged me to keep moving saying “Esta borracho. Así es esa gente.” As I looked in the rearview mirror, I saw that the old man had picked up a rock and I sped up as he hurled it with deadly accuracy in my direction. Had I not accelerated, it would have landed in the bed of the truck at least.

We went on to the village we wanted to visit, hiking 45 minutes over a hill about 1,000 feet above the village and down into the valley. The view from above really defies description because adjectives like breathtaking even fall short.











Our motive for traveling to Kuchuhuachu was to see this project that involves low-cost, improved homes and kitchens using local materials, adobe bricks and so forth. I went to this town a year ago and they told me that I was the first non Peruvian to ever visit it. It lies at 14,000 feet above sea level, 9 hours by truck and foot from the closest major city and is truly unspoiled.

Very proud of their accomplishments Anita and Delfina showed us their homes and kitchens.


They have changed everything from their homes before,

To their new homes.


Rightfully proud of their accomplishment since the area has no clay and all of the adobes had to be carried in on horse and human back, they happily showed us their modernized condition. Really, the change since a year ago left me amazed.

Winter has arrived here and so by the time we headed back up the hill, we had begun to lose daylight and the temperature really had begun to drop. Resting at the top of the hill we shared cheap soda pop that tasted like ambrosia, our small repast lit by the yawning view of the eternal firmament. Time was when the view of the Big Dipper on end and the Southern Cross in the sky kind of disoriented me but no more.

We had to move on before catching a chill and we had to pass through a village with a pack of savage dogs in total darkness. Lighting our way by the light in our cell phones, I would like to say that I pondered the incredible contrast to the dark huts of the other village but I actually spent the whole time hucking rocks at the constantly circling and obviously dangerous curs. I did think of Xenophon on his way back to Greece through hostile Persia. Just to let you know what a geek I really am. Afterwards, we headed back to Tambulla and thence home through the night.

I worried about the drunks but figured that the dark had driven them home by now. The very clear thought crossed my mind that I might run over a passed-out drunk in the road but I dismissed it. Nevertheless, I did my best to move through the dark cautiously.

Bouncing over the road we came upon an abandoned bicycle and speculated on its owner. A little farther along we came upon an inebriated woman who held up her plastic bottle of anise scented rubbing alcohol in a kind of barroom salute. A little farther along we came upon a saddled rider less horse and the women in the car began to speculate on whose was whose. They decided that the woman was on her way to a secret meeting with the bicycle’s owner and that she had fallen from the horse. They commented on the strangeness of the whole thing saying, “Bicycle without owner, horse without owner… married woman without owner,” and all laughed.

We had gone about half the distance to Tambulla where there is a rough patch of road. A detour has been made around it. As I turned into the cutoff, we saw a figure lying in the road, just as I had imagined before. I could have actually run over him had I not been going the speed I was going. The nurses asked me to stop and check him out and they speculated that he had been thrown from the horse. I turned around to put my headlights on him and we got out to check on him. He was just sleeping or passed out but had sustained no damage averring that he had not been bucked from his mount but had been on foot. I doubt he really knew. We moved him off of the road while Savi said that he would react to the cold but no one would run over him there.

We left them in the Puesta de Salud in Tambulla and headed back to camp. On our way we came upon a wasted horseman who we followed as he strove to urge his mount to higher velocity. With each effort to whip his charger he nearly fell from the horse. Sonia, our nurse filmed the hysterical antics of the jinete and I asked if she thought he would fall if I passed. “Que caiga, pue!” (Let him fall, man!) and she laughed. We got home in time to eat the last bits of food in the lunch room.

Repenting And Catching Up

You know that, "Live fast/die young; leave a good looking corpse..." saying? I am working on the first bit but too late for the latter.

I am always thinking about other opportunities and think I would like to
start an NGO or a tour company.

NGOs are Non Government Organizations: Sierra Club, Green Peace But some do good work: Habitat for Humanity, Care, Unicef etc.

There are bzillions of them and I have thoughts around things that improve lifestyle for campesinos, education for children and so forth. People get sucked into giving so much money to bad/useless causes and there are so many folks in my neck of the woods with too much money that I think I could reach with my information and winning smile that I think it is worth a shot for something I am confident is a meaningful cause. There are hundreds of Peruvians that would work with me in something like this.

My other thought is to put together a company that gives tours of Peru. I know a lot about it now that I have lived here for twelve years. Imagine that! I have at least one great possible employee here who works for me now who would follow me to hell, I think. Anyway, I am thinking about targeting LDS church members who are interested in possible Book of Mormon sites and other stuff. I know something about eco tourism here too. The deepest and darkest Amazon forest is here just out of Cusco, lots of backpacking venues etc.

I am just cogitating at the moment.

My eldest daughter is getting married in Louisville Kentucky because she and her pretended are living in Bloomington, Indiana and Louisville is the closest LDS temple. She is a definite vagabond. She finished at BYU and went to live in Boston for two years but decided to get a Masters in Spanish linguistics and that led into a PhD. And meeting him...

He is a bit younger than she and is studying Mechanical Engineering in Indianapolis. I have talked to him on the phone and on SKYPE about three times. My wife is back there as I write this from the Peruvain altiplano and has seen and approved but I won't meet him until the wedding. My daughter will be 30 this November so don't know how much of a vote I have anyway. Seems like a great guy. She has a self portrait with him in her blog, she is a much more faithful blogger than I as you can see, if you want to take a look @ http://misshass.typepad.com/.

One son is finishing up a MS in geology but with a petroleum bent in DFW at
Texas Christian University. He has a son, is married and has a two year old son who calls me papa and loves my masks on my wall and my dogs and the rest of life. His wife is expecting a baby girl in five or six months.

My other son has finished his BA in Arabic Linguistics at BYU and is going to start law
school in August at Lubbock, Texas Tech. He got accepted to 7 law schools
so took the one he liked the best. He is also married and has an adorable one year old baby girl.

My wife, My twin daughters are bringing a friend of the girls and My wife's
brother, wife and three kids to Peru in July. This was planned before the wedding entered the picture, actually weddings. My wife and I will be padrinos for a dear friend here in Arequipa while they are here. It gives me rights to threaten bodily harm to macho little Peruvian men who might not be sufficiently attentive to the women in question. The culture shock for the other gringos might be fairly extreme in the fiesta. None of them recognize Salsa, Huayno, or Saya, let alone know how to dance to them. It should be entertaining.

Our girls will be juniors this year largely due to the whole Peru thing.
They get straight A's and my youngest (technically because they are twins) takes voice and sings beautifully, the 45 minutes older daughter writes stories and poems and they both read a lot. The latter asked for "Caesar's Conquest of Gaul" and a copy of Thucydides for her birthday you can guess who she takes after... the first has a thing for boring British literature. Go figure. The older kids are voracious readers as well. Peru was responsible for that in all but the eldest. We had terribly dull TV and for 6 months none at all when we got here. They became victims of my library and worse yet, they have no sense of modern music, just 60's - 80's blues, and rock and really old music. They actually recognize and like the blues and know who BB King and John Hyatt are. Weirdos!

In regards to my blogging it is not that I have quit but life just got a little bit ahead of me. I have also gone a fair bit into writing a book that is suspended at the moment. I am not sure if I am repenting and getting back into it but perhaps, just with smaller bits after this one. Goad me and fill my head with flattery and I would probably start again...

Regarding my book, interest in writing has mostly to do with places and people I have known. A great friend gives me a push now and again. He and I have nearly identical interest in the literature area...Well I like some reasonably weird stuff from the reading end and I read more than he does but what he likes to read, I like to write about. I have been reading lots of historical stuff, Herodotus, Xenophon, Shelby Foote and so forth, mostly military stuff of late. Of course I always read The Book of Mormon.

I have actually never left Peru. I go back and forth from New Mexico and feel like air travel is something that Dante left out of his circles of Hell. Still I love it here. I have thought of retiring here but it is a little troubled because of the whole security thing and with the resurgence of the Shining Path etc...

I am working more than I ever. It is cold down here now. I have spent less than two months at home so far this year. I do love Peru after these 12 years here but feel a tremendous disconnect with family and the states. I often think of Charles Boyer throwing away his little bag of French soil in the movie about Jean Lafitte.