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.
