July 31st
July saw me at great heights—snowboarding with my dad on Chile’s incredible peaks—and also at a scary low—being beaten up and robbed in my capitol city of Piura. I’ll start with the good and hopefully make peace with the bad.
I arrived in Santiago, Chile a couple days before my dad and immediately hopped on the next bus for the port town, Valparaiso. There the salty arctic breeze, meaty chicken soup, apples and churrasco sandwiches carried me on and aimless wander through a vibrant maze of streets and alleys decorated with huge murals and eccentric graffiti, on ascensores as they creaked and crawled up the ancient faces of hills with names like “Joyful” and “Beautiful View,” through the breathing house of the late poet Pablo Neruda, and at last into a lively smoke-filled bar to watch the Chile-Bolivia soccer match.
I met my dad at the airport with an unabated happiness of familiarity and an unyielding grin that held months of anticipation. What followed that week were habitual outpourings of the thoughts and sentiments accumulated over ten months united by shred sessions down powdery slopes; growing closer in friendship to my dad than ever before. There are quite a few stories I could tell about rental boards, a fierce storm, an icy cook-out, chains and a car named “Betsy,” an Incan Lake, a lude Canadian, a cute Chilean, and a kind Haitian, but they wouldn’t come out right here. Best wait for Eddy’s faithful account over a couple glasses of wine. I will write one particularly memorable quote from the old man, said to a couple Brazilians and accompanied by arm and hand gestures: “Me speak very little Spanish, mucho English.” And I will take this space to thank my dad for the trip of a lifetime, his untiring optimistic outlook, and all the support he’s given to allow me to be where I am now and do what I’m doing. It was tough seeing him off at the airport. I hadn’t realized until then just how much I missed him and the rest of the family.
After Chile I made my way back up to Chalaco where I was soon visited by my dear friend and mentor, Frieda, and guided through the final patches of my grant application. Then it was a week of more house visits to site latrines, a series of community meetings here and there in the district, polishing the new composting latrine design with Wilse in the municipality and sending in my grant for approval. Sighing in relief I set back out on the road to spend Peru’s Independence Day vacation in the sierra town of Huancabamba, known for its gorgeous mountain lakes and hallucinogenic healing rituals performed by shamans. I passed on tripping balls in a dark room while some guy spits in your face and opted instead for a hike with some buddies to Laguna Shimbe, where we camped shoreside in a small cow barn that we swept free of its many patties. Soaked clothes and shoes made keeping warm tough, and the driving mist and soggy ground made starting a fire absolutely impossible, despite expert efforts, but eventually the weather cleared and we settled into sleep beneath a brilliantly star-lit sky. We awoke to passing birds over a glass lake, under blue emptiness. After cleansing our souls in the purifyingly cold waters we were joined by a shaman and his two apprentice sons and watched on as he sang verses to the earth (“busca la bonita”) and turned in circles spraying elixirs and liquors into the air. Then it was it was a pleasant hike back to Huancabamba and on the late bus to Piura to head back to site for a meeting in Naranjo with the volunteer Matt who did the latrine project out there, while my buddies went on to hike and camp in Chachapoyas.
I arrived around midnight at the bus terminal in a fairly sketchy part of town, where the safe taxi I had called was to be waiting for me out front. I brushed past the mob of drivers trying to give me a lift and out to the sidewalk, and then watched in exhaustion as my safe taxi drove away with another passenger. Did it occur to me to call the taxi company again, or that maybe I wasn’t the only passenger who requested the service? In hindsight, yes. But in that moment, tired from the hike and delirious from Dramamine and an 8-hour uncomfortable bus ride, these thoughts did not come to mind. In that moment a lone taxi driver asked me where I was going and I responded. And despite the steps I’m used to taking to make sure a ride is safe, I felt that looking into the driver’s eyes and asking him directly was sufficient. I don’t know what allowed me to let down my guard so foolishly, but as sure as it’s told we took a wrong turn, onto a dark street where two men quickly got out of the moto-taxi driving in front of us and were on either side of me before I had a chance to make a move. They pinned me down and strangled me as I let out reflexive bursts of protest, and then began punching my face and gut. They dug into my pockets and then went to my wrist. As they unfastened my watch I yelled that it was a gift, and was immediately contested by an elbow to my left eye socket and more blows to my nose and forehead. The driver took us out to a part of town called Nueva Esperanza (New Hope)—a very poor and dangerous “young” neighborhood of Piura without electricity or paved roads. We slowed down and as they tore my jacket off I managed to get out the car, before they could take the rest of the clothes off my back. I lost everything I had taken camping with me, but all told I got lucky. They drove away, leaving me battered and bleeding but alive and without any serious injuries. I followed the lights of the taxi out to the main road where I stumbled about looking for anyone who could help me. An older woman gave me water and a shirt to clean the blood, and then her two sons helped me back into town where thankfully a friend of mine had been staying. I spent the rest of the night turning in bed with a head full of regret, fear, anger, and throbbing pain. The couple hours I did sleep were nightmares, and the next day I found nervous trauma in every thought and on every corner of Piura.
I escaped the city that afternoon have since begun the slow process of putting myself back together in the tranquility of Chalaco. I found myself smiling again today—when making house visits to check up on the latrines in Naranjo, being hugged at random by some little boy in a Spiderman shirt who I had complemented on his saltazo (big jump) from the bathroom stairs. Anyway, I think I’ll grow from this experience, another facet of affliction that I now somewhat understand. From here I move on, get back to work, and try my best to seek out the beautiful.
