El Traje

La reina solitaria

Madruga el día

Prende la cocina

Se viste poncho pasado

Muda, ordeña y cosecha

Hila el capullo

Da luz en casa

Una pieza oscura

Encima piel de oveja

Frente sus hijos

El tigre proletario

Amanece el sol

Lleva camisa desgastado

Se calza llonquis de jebe

Tira barreta, tierra y paja

Toma por el camino

Recibe luz en casa

Prende abejas extraviadas

Rodeadas por basura

De la carretera al cerro

La criatura muda

Se callosa los cachetes

Seña sierra acogedora

Machetes cortan dedos

Sospecha costa ardiente

Chorros disparan balas

Sueña selva ambulante

Cataratas desconocidas

Razona en ojos transeúntes

Que le juran o eluden

Jebe y Machete

13 April

Chachapoyas

Capital de

Casas uniformes

Blancas con tejas marrones

Balcones de madera

El tornado Gokta y

Amazonas

Apreciador de

Chaquetas de cuero,

Chistes botas blancas,

El Poderoso Sr. Cautivo,

Chirimoya, granadilla

Humitas, trucha frita,

Cecina, corazón,

Mamei y sapote,

Sensual Karicia y

Kumbia Norteña

Sierra bróther

Charapo coceando

Calor humilde

Pueblo oscuro

Frío luna llena

Cuarto de paja

Hueso anciano

Gorro de gato

Momia retorcida

Maestro de piedra

Tiempo desconocido

Flores su equipaje

Pisco ginger

Jebe y machete

Baina con pelo

Snacks en la disco

Man baby borracho

¡Ponga música!

¡Déjala! ¡Déjala!

¡No vale nada!

(https://picasaweb.google.com/107203502739002405475/Chachapoyas) 

24 April

There’s a party upstairs, goodbye party for an odontologist that interned in the Chalaco Health Center for a few months. I was friendly with her and work with most of the staff of the Health Center, but can’t bring myself to drink and dance with them. It’s that my host mom prepares the food, plays the music loud, and sells the beer, and at 1 AM, she sits near the coal embers of a low open stove, hunched over in a chair made for pre-schoolers, holding a small notebook and a pen, eyes heavy, marking a tally for each bottle taken and directing guests to the bathroom, al fondo a la vereda a la derecha. She waits to sleep, while they whistle and stomp and shout for a short, repeating playlist of popular kumbia and reggaeton songs. I edge through the crowd, bobbing my head in salute to a few but avoiding sustained eye contact. Outside I chat with the municipality’s night watchman, who peers inside warily at the squiggling bodies. I ask him if he parties like this, and he responds that he doesn’t like music. Surprised that such blanket distaste for something so humanly inherent could exist, I pry if there is any music at all that he likes. “Música criolla,” he says. Guess that excludes kumbia. Fair.

Mind over matter. The doc told me I have to change my diet because of my heartburn problems; that the pills I’ve been taking since October shouldn’t be taken for longer than a month. The worst part—no coffee. I’ll be tired and have headaches all day, won’t be able to speak Spanish. My work and wellbeing will suffer. Toñio says that caffeine dependency is all in your head, like most other needs. One time he was traveling up to Chalaco in the middle of the night in the back of a truck, wearing only a t-shirt (and pants) in the freezing, misty open air. He said that to survive he forced himself to think that that he was really hot, and that indeed he began to sweat and thought nothing of the cold. He also tricks himself into not getting nauseous on the bus between Chalaco and Piura, the ride that at least two people puke on every time.

Un Abrazo

14 March

Mateo is my host nephew. Six years old, loves Spiderman, Transformers, toy cars, and french fries. Cute and chubby, with black, bowl cut hair, he wants to be tall and fat and drive big trucks just like his dad when he grows up. He is silent and focused while eating, pushing rice, potato, and egg onto a flimsily-gripped large spoon with two fingertips and quickly sending the food to his tiny mouth, flinging bits all around his plate, like a little bird at the table we say. When talking he omits entirely the letter “R,” only occasionally being corrected by his grandma Elvira, mostly as warm recognition of his preciousness. His parents are separated, his dad living here with us in Chalaco, his mom in a place called Pedro Ruiz, a 14 hour bus ride away on the edge of a cloud forest that merges the northern Andes with the Amazon. He normally lives with his mom during the school year, March to December, and then with us during the summer break. His dad has been delaying the trip to take him back, in part because he doesn’t want to leave him, but mostly because Mateo seems to have more fun in Chalaco, playing make-believe with friends and cousins all day rather than watching cartoons alone in his room. Tomorrow night he’s supposed to leave for Pedro Ruiz.

After dinner he was pretending to be a super villain, and said to me and his grandma Elvira in a menacing tone that he would destroy us both. I acted real serious and asked why he would do such a thing to people that love him. He said it was a joke and threw his arms onto me, saying that it was the last hug he’d ever give me, and then ran off to help his dad fix something on his motorcycle. Elvira started crying, trying to fight or hide it. Was it the already felt absence of Mateo, or that his words reminded her of last hug she gave Carlos, her late husband, nearly two years ago. We’ve grown somewhat used to her sudden moments of public grief, solemnly going on with our meal, continuing the conversation but with a lower voice and slower pace. Here I was the only one at the table, and wished terribly for the courage to say something of console, put my hand on her back and let her know that she isn’t alone, that I’m sorry for her pain, but I just sat there choked, waiting for her to stand up and carry her solitary burden into the next room.


26 March

In the center of the very last row on the Albaca bus, heading back to Chalaco from a week away, dizzy from the heat and light, tank-top soaked in sweat, smashed between two men that smell of stale cigarette smoke and long days, searching for that air entering the bus through inch slits in the windows towards the front, delirious and slightly hungover, blood buzzing from the Dramamine. Awake again, climbing, mind reflexively jumping with every dramatic tilt of the hulking vessel, clenching impressed tire tracks, over fallen, cut and exposed earth and rock, around rigid turns that steeply drop deep into the valley. They say that in order to survive a bus falling, you must hug the seat in front of you as tightly as possible, not letting go until you’ve stopped overturning.

There are two agencies that travel between the department capitol, Piura, and Pacaipampa, the capitol of the district just an hour further inland from Chalaco. One agency is Albaca, the one I always take simply because my host family sells tickets from our house. The other is called Turpa or Yambur, depending who you ask or which sign you read. Last Friday, the 16th, I was in my house, waiting to leave Chalaco for a quick visit to Lima for a music festival and then to help out with a volunteer training in Trujillo, when Elvira received a call saying that the Turpa bus traveling from Pacaipampa to Chalaco had a mechanical failure and went off the side of the road. The news immediately spread around town and everyone began worrying about the number of deaths. Another passengers waiting to take the Albaca down to Piura commented to me as she washed her face in our backyard sink how the deaths are tragedy, but worse would be to live through it. Albaca pulled into a gathered crown carrying two of six survivors—one the ayudante, trembling, bloody and crying, the other a young woman taken off the bus in a stretcher of wool bed comforters. Twenty-two had been on board.

Albaca started up again, I said my goodbyes to Elvira and the kids, got on and sat down amongst soft rumors and floating dust. The woman next to me had been on since Pacaipampa, seen everything, had bought a ticket with Albaca because the Turpa office had been closed. She held her face in her hands, sighed and sobbed, called her family on the coast. They had heard on the radio, were worried sick. The air was hushed and our chofer moved along slowly, with and unnatural caution for the entire five drive.

Back at site, in the evening, in our internet café, a group of kids and adults were looking through photos of the crash. I overhear them talking about the ayudante and impulsively join the group, maybe to confront or understand the man whose shaking face I’ve seen all week. Here he is again, on the ground in a cow pasture, his leg twisted, wrought with pain. Without notice, they move onto the next picture, the two year old girl that had died, lying on her side in a white dress, her face and hair red. I turn away and can’t breathe, hurry outside and back home, into my room.

I don’t want this entry to make my family or anyone else worry about me. This is the first bus accident on this road and surely similar tragedies happen everywhere else, in the US, too. All the drivers are noticeably more cautious now, don’t even listen to music on the ride, and supposedly all the buses have been inspected and fixed up.

“Tu propia herida se cura con llanto, tu propia herida se cura con canto” – Neruda

16 January
The morning is filtered, scattered light. Fast rising white, climbing the hills, pushing through doorways, masking faces, filling our lungs, exhaled. Colliding, propagating seeds carried by the wind onto flat concrete. Time crawls, is metered by walnuts being hammered on the floor upstairs, then drags to a halt as a blaze of rain floods the town with silence. I return to my four green walls, a grey window and a scratched wooden door, an iron chair wrapped in wicker, a cold mattress, a crowded desk, a guitar and a stereo, photos and birthday cards, and a falling ceiling. Why do I drink coffee to wake up when all I need is sleep? 300 days. All that I had written about after visiting home—sensing that I was coming across as a naïve idealist or stray hippie, looking at my time left here as a reformative sentence—is exactly what I fear seeing in myself, not what everyone else saw. My own motives for being here are deceiving me. A week ago I gave serious thought to a third year, but now it doesn’t seem worth it or something I can mentally realize.

I’m overwhelmed and out of breath. I try to sit but can’t, it’s too early. I grab my umbrella and break the stillness outside. The storm has passed and the afternoon is becoming unusually dry. The moon must be changing. I walk up the algae covered stairs of the municipality and give a pass around the plaza, empty save Chalaco’s one homeless woman, standing underneath the church awning. She speaks rarely, accepts whatever she is offered, carries herself and the clothes she wears only—a green sweater, a grey poncho, a long skirt with a flower print, car-tire sandals and a Native-American themed hat featuring a stern wolf in the center of pending feathers. Is it really just the weather? Just don’t stop, don’t hide from the rain, stay busy, take on those projects that Chelsea is leaving behind, become isolated and out of touch with America, read old newspapers, learn what it’s really like to live here, keep talking, keep working.

29 January
Today was a win for the home team. Over the past couple of months there have been rumblings of a separatist movement in my community of Chimulque, ever since plans were manifested to install 30 water connections for families that before relied mostly on the outdoor tap of some abandoned home, irrigation canals, or a murky puddle in the middle of a cow pasture. A good portion of these houses were built after the existing water system was constructed, and for some time have referred to themselves as belonging to a sector of Chimulque called, “Valle Hermoso” (something like “Pleasant Valley”). The project was more though—the construction of an additional reservoir, rehabilitations on all the pressure break tanks, and improvements to the existing springbox (a cement box that captures groundwater that had run into a layer of impermeable soil and started moving horizontally through a more porous medium until springing forth from the mountainside). Also, seeing as how the water resources in Chimulque were already scarce before these new connections and how the kindly donated funds of friends and family exceeded what I need for the bathrooms project, I was able to complement this water system project with the construction of a brand new springbox to add more flow to the system.

At the time that the existing system was built the families of Valle Hermoso weren’t around to help with the community labor, and so a forma agreement was made to have each beneficiary pay $75 to hook up to the system, the same amount anyone has to pay for a new connection. This money was used to buy the small piece of land where the new springbox was built, while the municipality contributed cement and rebar for the springbox construction. The whole thing made a wonderful tale of collaboration and development.

The project went well enough, with only a minimal number of finishing touched left undone, and we arrived at the moment to agree on the terms of the management, operation and maintenance of the renovated system. Sounds straightforward, but I could see that it wouldn’t be so easy. Butthurt about some ancient gossip or bothered about having to pay to connect to the system, like little boys that were criticized or harshly teased in the treehouse and then dedicated themselves entirely toward haughty independence from their big-shot, no-good, so-called friends, two of the guys in Valle Hermoso deviously rallied nearly the entire sector behind a secret meeting to form a second water committee to manage everything new about the water system—the first step, they hoped, towards forming an entirely separate community. When of these actors, Javier, notified me of these plans I strongly discouraged him against it, citing textbook cases in the district where two committees were made for the same water system and everything fell into disrepair as neither committee fulfilled their responsibilities and more conflicts set in. Water fights get ugly real fast, and purposely creating divisions is asking for trouble. Aside from this, Valle Hermoso has no legal right to be making these decisions outside of a general assembly. So I says to the guy, “Look, listen to me, whatever issues you want to bring up at a general assembly the rest of the community will hear out. We gotta figure this out with everyone present. Discourse is the solution. I’m gonna go around and let everyone know that this Sunday, instead of having that BS meeting at your house, we’re all going to meet in the casa comunal.”

So I plan out this big agenda for the meeting, ask my socio from the health center to help out, put an announcement on the radio, bake cookies, buy streamers…but on Sunday morning when I arrive at the casa comunal in Chimulque sure enough those jodidos (rough translation—“fuckers”) had already begun their exclusive meeting up in Valle Hermoso and were getting ready to sign some invalid acta! Thankfully my doctor buddy Hermerigildo was there to tell em what’s up, cuz even with him it took a good half hour to finally get them to suspend their unlawful gathering and come down to the casa comunal to reunite with the rest of the gente.

From then on it was a never ending calamity of bickering, finger-pointing, misdirected passive aggression, repetitious distractions and peripheral debates, advances and regressions, pleas and concessions. Twice I quoted Abe Lincoln’s “house divided” line and at one point I said something akin to what that mom on The Simpsons would say: “But what about the children?! Won’t someone think of the children?!” Finally we broke through the storm and into calm seas, agreeing on one solo committee with two system operators, each having very defined responsibilities. We even managed to get through the rest of the agenda and they got a special lesson on the importance of household water disinfection. I’m not gonna lie, afterwards I felt pretty proud of myself and my doctor buddy. Maybe if I hadn’t been there to call this emergency meeting, and if Meri hadn’t been there to try to bring people together, try not to cause divisions, down the road things wouldn’t be so good for either side, not to mention the children. Let’s just hope the peace is lasting.

"Ya viene el agua y todo se deshace!"

Dec. 15th

Every day lately has been a series of recurring disappointments, ending with an admission of what lies out of my control and a settling for what remains inside the four walls of my bedroom. I wake up to footsteps, chatter and music above me, the roosters, or a broom slamming against my basement door as the dirt, trash and food scraps left on the restaurant floor from the previous day are brushed down the stairs and out the back door to our corral. Cold and confused, feeling slightly nauseous, I look down the low hanging wooden beams toward the colorful handmade tablecloth partially covering my bedroom window, gauging how much light I’ll see today. I think of that first cup of coffee and resolve to get up. The house only get’s louder from here on anyway, plus I gotta put the pressure on the municipality early in the day if I want to get any materials delivered to my community, Chimulque.

I rush into warm clothes and peek outside with high hopes. We’re trapped, again, in between a two thick grey blankets. If the clouds above are high enough there will be a few hours of sun that morning, but if they press down closely overhead we’ll likely be plagued by driving mist all day. Either way, the dark cushion below will rise at noon and cover everything. Anywhere else I’ve lived that experiences crappy weather the rain is a mere depressing or tiring nuisance. People put on a jacket and ride their bikes, grab an umbrella and walk around, hit the wipers and drive their cars, go to work. Life goes on. Here the walkways, roads and houses are made of silty-clay. The slightest drizzle turns the valley into one giant slip-n-slide, and every truck in sight will refuse to deliver materials to village job sites.

As for construction during the rainy season, everyone and mother is a frickin’ meteorologist here. You got the cynics that coldly laugh and taunt that this is what it’ll be like every day until May, that it only gets worse and ya no avanza (progress is impossible). Others, like me, try to stay upbeat and remind them about how sunny it was for two weeks last January, and that there’s still time to make the adobe bricks needed for your bathroom, that the maestros (builders) can cover everything up in the afternoon and just work the first half of the day.

The municipality shares this optimism, so I promise the community members and maestros what I’ve been promised, a bunch of plastic tarps so that the mud bricks don’t “melt in the water.” The municipality ordered 50 square meters of it for my project, and I paid for 25 meters more when I was in Piura buying a bunch of other materials. But somewhere in both our supply chains there’s a link that’s failing. My main-man materials distributor down in Piura, Walter, has assured me every morning this week that the goods will leave Piura at 4 and be in Chalaco that night at 9. He’ll even use his minutes to call me! But come the afternoon and Walter is nowhere to be reached. The municipality likewise plays with my emotions, but more often and to a greater extent—with cement, aggregate, good dirt to make adobes, the plastic, nearly everything else they’ve ever agreed to. Then I gotta be the messenger, feeling like an ass for lying to the community members breaking their backs making adobes that won’t withstand the rains, and to the maestros that show up to work without materials to build with. They must be so used to it, because the next day, they just keep on going, forgiving me for being naïve to how things work here.

“Disappointed” in Spanish is supposedly one of those false cognates—decepcionado—which you would think translates to “deceived.” Really though, it makes sense. When I put faith in the word of others, when I have goals that loft high above the norm, when I make that to-do list, or when I look out on the day and predict the weather, I’m knowingly deceiving myself, making myself susceptible to disappointment. Yet I keep doing it every day, managing to smile all the while, because sometimes some things do work out right, and it’s always better than doing nothing.

Night rolls in and I’m still at nerves trying to make something more productive of the day. Luckily I always put some easy ones on the list—study Spanish for a bit, play guitar, and maybe watch an episode of La Paisana Jacinta with Crhis, a comedy show about this super campo sierra lady (dressed almost exactly like some women in my site and played by a man) that moves to Lima in search of work, and all the mix-ups she gets into trying to adapt to the city lifestyle.

Cold again, curled up in bed under heavy grey blankets. The rain stops and all I hear are the crickets chirping outside. Last on the list is reading for pleasure, however few or many pages I wish and strictly fiction. I turn off my headlamp and arrive at the best part, asking nothing more of myself.

Pedaleando

November 23

About a week ago I was visited during dinner by a young-twenties journalist/radio host who was in-charge of promoting the anniversary of Pacaipampa, our district neighbor to the north. She was confirming the reports that some gringo living in Chalaco wanted to participate in the upcoming mountain bike race. I was taken aback by how good looking she was for someone from the sierra, so much so that I couldn’t bring myself to give the cheek-kiss hello, only the safely-distanced hand shake, and kept using the formal “you” in every question. Anyway, she told me that the race was on Sunday, a few days earlier than I expected. We parted ways and I began my training immediately, warming up and stretching in our restaurant while my host bro made lofty but convincing promises to accompany me on his motorcycle for the race, carrying water, snacks, chain lube, his tire pump and enthusiasm.

The next day was the test. I’d been told that if I could bike from Chalaco to Piercas up on the Meseta Andina then the race would be a piece of cake. I had attempted this a couple times before but could only make it a pitiful distance up the merciless inclines before I was holding my knees on the side of the road, trying to recover my breath and cursing my occasional cigarette habit. Now was my last chance to prove that I was healthy enough to do this race. I ate an extra breakfast, packed a lil pouch of trail mix, poured some oral rehydration solution (ORS) into my water bottle, vested myself in spandex biking shorts, kicked the jams and hit the road. I didn’t expect to make it, but the race fervor had taken me over. After a couple hours in the lowest gear I finally reached the ever-expanding plains of the Meseta. I popped it into 2nd and took off cruising down the smooth dirt road, rolling and winding past the occasional horseman or sheep herd, laughing and grinning all the way to Piercas. When I got back to Chalaco I swiftly moved on to my next mission—strictly adhering to my sister Alaina’s training advice. I stopped biking from then until the race, stayed as loose as possible [by breaking into my site-mate Chelsea’s high-ceilinged room to practice yoga while she’s away on vacation], put ORS in every drink, and began eating double-meat and extra rice with my meals.

On Saturday I hopped the bus to Pacaipampa, arriving several hours earlier than the competition. I wandered the streets a little but received some pretty scrutinizing looks and soon became paranoid that everyone thought I was a miner, so I went back to my room in the municipal hotel and relaxed, looking out over the plaza as the sound technician tested the limits of the fifty foot speaker towers for the party that night. Eventually the other bikers showed up and an over-zealous bike race organizer laid out the plan. We were to buddy up in the small hotel, try to get a few hours of sleep, wake up at 3 AM, cram into some pick-up trucks and drive out to Totora, the starting point 60K away. In the freezing pitch dark, sharing a front seat with some random friend of the driver just along for the ride, AC on blast, delirious from dramamine and having barely slept through the booming Cumbia music, I found myself questioning whether this was really happening. A sense of aimlessness and passive introspection drifted in and out as I gazed tiredly at the sierra night sky. I awoke to my head hitting the passenger-side window and slight shades of light outlining the impressive, distant peaks. We crossed over tropical valley floor and steadily climbed the ridge that defines Perú from Ecuador, up to the highest caserío on the very fringe of the district.

The riders de-thawed in morning sun as local folks passed the time commenting on some of the professional bikes from Lima and Cajamarca, comparing them to the rigid fixed-gears from the zona as their kids peeked shyly at the strange gathering. Still focused on my eating regimen, I passed on the traditional breakfast of fried tortillas, cheese and lemongrass tea and instead ate some bread and avocado I’d packed, not minding my impoliteness or having satisfied their preconceptions of foreigners.

The first half of the race was pure downhill, an amazing ride through some absolutely incredible landscapes. In twenty minutes the riders had spread out it was just my bike and I, bumpin along to some tunes. Occasionally I’d pass through a small village of ten or so houses and some campo spectators either yelling “Dale! Dale! Dale!” or just standing their quietly examining the sight. After fording the river at the valley floor I began the slow ascent up the other side. The shady palm trees soon vanished, the road dried to sand, and the midday equatorial sun bore down. A couple of times I shared the climb alongside a few others, but they each fell back and later passed me on the back of pickup trucks. Then I was alone again, about ¾ the way up I’d guessed, with a few sips of water left in what felt like the middle of the desert. I was beat; overheated and dehydrated, back and legs throbbing, chain bone dry and full of dirt, head spinning. I found a small patch of shade off to the side and took five, then resigned to hop on the next passing truck. But looking down the mountain I could see no life, and figured I should at least walk on a bit farther in case nothing came by. A hundred yards ahead a truck did come by, but it was completely full with bikes and their owners, so the driver convinced me to keep going. He stole me some water from a passenger, poured some brake fluid on my chain, and assured me there wasn’t much left until the top, and that from there it was all downhill to Pacaipampa.

I made it into town, dodging tied up mules and kids playing soccer in the street, and pulled up to an empty finish line, fourth place in four hours. Nearly everyone had already gotten back by truck and was lounging in a restaurant with the mayor and other local authorities, drinking Inka Cola and eating ceviche.

And that was it. I almost felt a withdrawal from the race, but knew that it was about time I balanced out. In that short time leading up to it I was all nerves, overly aware of every sore muscle and preoccupied with my health. My Spanish took a concerning dive and I started to involuntarily throw in English fillers, as if the energy required to think about words was reserved for some other body function. I’ve since recovered and am happily back to work. The latrine project encountered a major hurdle the other day that I thought would cancel the whole thing and waste the past year of my life. Just some destructive rumors spread like wildfire by unsatisfied beneficiaries that want to swap the composting latrines for the more socially desirable pour-flush latrines. Luckily the engineers at the municipality and my socio from the health post dominated in the community meeting tonight and everything’s been smoothed out. Day two of construction is tomorrow, Thanksgiving, and I couldn’t ask for more.

Estrellita

19 October

About three to four months ago my little sis Crhis (real spelling) began dropping daily hints about her fifth birthday. It’d go like this: “Daniel, guess how many years I have,” then, “When do I complete five years?” I’d tell her to answer her own question and she’d always reply with the 28th of October, ten days after her birthday, as a test to make sure I knew the real date. When her cousin turned five in August she tried convincing everyone that it was really her birthday and not Emily’s, then when no one bought it and she realized how much longer she’d have to wait she cried until she fell asleep that night. And in September there was a week or two when each day she would ask everyone she saw if they were coming to her party later. For all the hype, I expected something similar to the 1-year-old’s party I went to during training in Lima—60 guests all sitting along the border of the room waiting quietly for their portion of rice and chicken (to be served overflowing on tiny disposable plates and eaten with impossibly small plastic spoons), hired “entertainers” dressed as sexy clowns shaking their tush to booming reggaeton as little girls followed suit, drinking in circles and dancing until midnight when the cartoon-themed three layer cake that cost a good month or two’s earnings could finally be eaten and everyone could go home—but thankfully my family is a bit more modest.

A quote by Crhis, overheard on Nov. 2nd while typing this up: “Papi, cuando es mi cumpleaño?” It’s begun again. Ok, back to the entry.

The party was low key though very high pitched, and increasingly so as these tiny bodies became hyper saturated with the 10 course dessert and candy menu: masamora (goey purple stuff), jello, flan, arroz con leche, popcorn, ice-cream, yogurt drink, lollipops, cookies, caramelos, and finally the cake. I’ve got a funny picture of this one kid that was straight tweaking out. He wasn’t even saying words anymore, just screeching and running, eyes popping out of his sticky face. Aside from the set of coloring markers I got her, Crhis’ only other present was a little doll that sings the English version of “Estrellita, Dónde Estás?” (“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”). Skipping and jumping everywhere she went, I realized that she was mostly just excited about the attention. It was the one day that could shut down her grandma’s restaurant/bus agency, take both her parents out of work, and warrant her ordering every passerby to wish her a happy birthday. The fam was hoping to do a little something for my birthday as well, but I don’t think I could handle another sugar bender so soon. Instead I’ll be camping out with my buddy Chris (-topher) who lives nearby and goin on a much anticipated pilgrimage to a small village named Keirpón to retrieve a former volunteer’s long-lost guitar.

Some fond memories of the Great Amazon River Raft Race (GRARRR): passing to the other side of the Andes and seeing from the plane a forest that stretches on endlessly, untouched and indifferent, and then, the incomprehensibly massive serpent river calmly locking it all in place; being engulfed in flash storms while on our balsa wood submarine in the middle nowhere with no other team in sight, only rain; observar-ing la naturaleza with Birdman and the rest of Team Macho Man on the Slim Jim and passing time with top-5 lists; dripping sweat while watching an epic Perú-Paraguay game on an ancient TV in a creaky cantina packed to its max; being so exhausted but still drinking enough each night to get a few hours of refugee-style sleep in smelly elementary school auditoriums; walking around forever at 4 am with Droch and El trying to find some street food and eventually settling for candy bars out of some guys briefcase; standing on the malecón in Iquitos and saying to myself “Holy Moses, we did it.”

26 October
There are a few people here that live at the very edge of society, in a small adobe house nested on a steep mountainside deep in the dry forests that transition the tropical sierra to the barren desert. Reached only by foot or horseback, noticed only by those who are lost while searching for a fabled guitar, or, more commonly, by those who also dwell on the fringe, simply passing in this case to continue their path towards their own small piece of settled, claimed earth. Static, silent, barely found at hours walking distance from the nearest isolated village of thirty families, a link that appears to break when the rains come and the river washes over their slight foot prints, drowns the huge boulders and floods the riparian sprawl, splits the valley into islands for almost half a year.

Do these remote families live so as an innate or natural conclusion to survival? Is it the result of an inheritance without escape or one that contently resists change? Would they want those health services that I’ve been calling important and basic, that is, enough water of adequate quality and improved sanitation? Does that only matter when we share common resources, the trade-off for sharing common experiences?