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?