Why I Stay

Staying a third year in a small Quechua town without many amenities may have seemed like a wild decision, a flight fancy, a desperate escape from the real world. During my weaker moments, I say the same. Over the past two and half years, I have had moments of painful frustration, agonizing self doubt and absurd awkwardness, yet these only highlight the true fulfillment and joy I´ve found throughout my Peace Corps service in Musho.

Sometimes, when groups of volunteers get together, there is a bad habit of getting into out doing one another´s complaints: Well, I don´t have hot water; well I don´t have any water; I don´t have cell service… etc. It´s an easy trap to fall into, as if we feel that by enduring hardships we prove ourselves as volunteers, as adventurers. However, endurance has always been a prerequisite for Peace Corps. As a friend of mine said, most of us applied imagining living in a straw hut in Africa, to find ourselves with cellphones and cement walls, our biggest lack close grocery stores and intellectual stimulation.

I stay in Musho not through some wish for self-flagellation or need to prove myself. If I prove anything over these two years, it will have little to do with my fortitude as an adventurer and more to do with an acquired patience and ability to bite my tongue. My reasons are two sided: one is idealistic and perhaps a bit foolish. The project I am working on this year, a Center for Early Childhood Development is unique in our region. The infrastructure is challenge enough, but I feel that my work and relationship with mothers here gives me an opening to actually encourage them to use this future center. In my hopeful moments, I know I am staying because there is a need in my community and I hope that my first two years gave me the abilities necessary to fill it. My second reason is far more selfish—I like it here. I like paying $1.50 for a three course meal, being given random gifts of produce by my neighbors, agonizing over Quechua verbs (and seeing Editha´s face light up when I finally produce an intelligible narrative), watching the subtle changes of seasons, knowing that I am important to people here and that by my presence I may make some change.

This week, several volunteers in our department were given the choice to leave Peace Corps, stay in their sites or change sites, based on the danger of transportation in their area. All of them would kill me in a game of “Who´s site is harder?”—Their sites are isolated, underserved by health and education personal, mostly Quechua speaking and often without Internet or cellphone service. However, when of think of them leaving, I think of my reasons for staying and hope that they consider the same reasons. By virtue of their sites being harder, I know that they have an amazing ability to introduce change, as slow and painful, as the process may seem. In the heat of the moment, a trip home might seem appealing, but you can never come back in the same way.
Earlier this week, in the midst of painful illness, I went through my wallet and found a free waffle coupon that expires in September. It was a call to homesickness—to 24-hour restaurants and fountain sodas, to big breakfasts and free refills on brewed coffee. Still, though, Waffle House will still be there in December, even if I do have to shell out $1.99 for a waffle. Opportunities and openings here are ephemeral and don´t come often. I wish I had a way to make those volunteers realize that.

Quechuata allí kosa yachakullaykaa!!

This weekend was another round of intensive quechua classes, four hours a day of grammar, vocabulary and painstaking practice. For me, the classes are always a bit frustrating. As soon as you walk out the door, perhaps with a bit of spring in your step after mastering the tricky “ku” suffix, you hear quechua. On my way back up to Musho every afternoon, I was surrounded by Quechua in the car. Straining my ears and trying to look nonchalant, I would try to understand the conversation around me. Inevitably, I would get lost.

Quechua, you see, is a language of suffixes. You may with one word: “sha” (to stand up) then add on “-mu” (directionally towards me) then “-rku” (directionally upwards) then “-ri” (quickly and just a little) to get “shamurkuri-“ which still must be conjugated and only the will mean “coming uphill for a little while.” I can also make it a question by adding “-ku” to the conjugated verb: “Shamurkurinki-ku?” “Are you coming uphill for a little while?” Quechua says with one maddening word what we say with 8.

However, what frustrates me also fascinates me. There is a suffix for humility and politeness (-lla, which changes the sense of any verb “Shamulla-“ would be, to come in a very humble and polite form) and a suffix for action realized on behalf of a community or group. There is a suffix for shared action (fighting, kissing, talking) and a suffix for meaning to help another person to do something (making the verbs learn, eat, sleep into teach, feed and put to bed).

Though I am no linguist, I like to think that these overly-specific, maddening suffixes not only act as a thorny barrier to my understanding but also show a lot about the Quechua culture. Our professor compared “-lla” (the suffix for politeness) to “por favor” (please, in Spanish), explaining that while you can use please in a tone of annoyance or demand (or sarcasm, in the States, “puh-lease…”), “-lla” could never be used that way and thus adds infinitely more courtesy to whatever action is realized. To work on behalf of the community is different than working for yourself, as kissing as a shared action is very different than kissing as a individual act.

Once I remember reading (probably in preparation for our rather bumbling journey to see Liesel) of a bilingual man, Japanese- English, who felt that his personality actually changed depending on the language that he spoke. In Japanese, he felt less selfish, more inclined to consider group and community. I wonder if the same thing happens to Quechua speakers. If so, I feel as though it gives far more reason to promote and cherish the Quechua language. With it´s demise may also come a diminished politeness and gentleness, a Spanish brashness and arrogance. For instance, I have been catcalled only once in Quechua and it was “kuyaqmi” (I love you) whereas it would take pages to note all the catcalls I´ve heard in Spanish. In 10 years, I want to know what language Musho will speak and what sort of changes that will bring about. In the mean time, I will suffer through pages of verbal and nominative suffixes in a quest for understanding.

Quechuata allí kosa yachakullaykaa!!

This weekend was another round of intensive quechua classes, four hours a day of grammar, vocabulary and painstaking practice. For me, the classes are always a bit frustrating. As soon as you walk out the door, perhaps with a bit of spring in your step after mastering the tricky “ku” suffix, you hear quechua. On my way back up to Musho every afternoon, I was surrounded by Quechua in the car. Straining my ears and trying to look nonchalant, I would try to understand the conversation around me. Inevitably, I would get lost.

Quechua, you see, is a language of suffixes. You may with one word: “sha” (to stand up) then add on “-mu” (directionally towards me) then “-rku” (directionally upwards) then “-ri” (quickly and just a little) to get “shamurkuri-“ which still must be conjugated and only the will mean “coming uphill for a little while.” I can also make it a question by adding “-ku” to the conjugated verb: “Shamurkurinki-ku?” “Are you coming uphill for a little while?” Quechua says with one maddening word what we say with 8.

However, what frustrates me also fascinates me. There is a suffix for humility and politeness (-lla, which changes the sense of any verb “Shamulla-“ would be, to come in a very humble and polite form) and a suffix for action realized on behalf of a community or group. There is a suffix for shared action (fighting, kissing, talking) and a suffix for meaning to help another person to do something (making the verbs learn, eat, sleep into teach, feed and put to bed).

Though I am no linguist, I like to think that these overly-specific, maddening suffixes not only act as a thorny barrier to my understanding but also show a lot about the Quechua culture. Our professor compared “-lla” (the suffix for politeness) to “por favor” (please, in Spanish), explaining that while you can use please in a tone of annoyance or demand (or sarcasm, in the States, “puh-lease…”), “-lla” could never be used that way and thus adds infinitely more courtesy to whatever action is realized. To work on behalf of the community is different than working for yourself, as kissing as a shared action is very different than kissing as a individual act.

Once I remember reading (probably in preparation for our rather bumbling journey to see Liesel) of a bilingual man, Japanese- English, who felt that his personality actually changed depending on the language that he spoke. In Japanese, he felt less selfish, more inclined to consider group and community. I wonder if the same thing happens to Quechua speakers. If so, I feel as though it gives far more reason to promote and cherish the Quechua language. With it´s demise may also come a diminished politeness and gentleness, a Spanish brashness and arrogance. For instance, I have been catcalled only once in Quechua and it was “kuyaqmi” (I love you) whereas it would take pages to note all the catcalls I´ve heard in Spanish. In 10 years, I want to know what language Musho will speak and what sort of changes that will bring about. In the mean time, I will suffer through pages of verbal and nominative suffixes in a quest for understanding.

A New Hope

Last week, I watched, little by little, the entire older Star Wars trilogy. Each evening, 9 pm found me curled up in bed, computer atop my lap, engrossed in the adventures of the Alliance against the evil Gallatic Empire. Was this the best use of my time? Perhaps not, but, as has become my new guilt-free philosophy, what work would I do at 9pm, with my host parents and siblings asleep? Also, for a couple days, it was the best answer to a long day full of frustration—too much bureaucracy, too many blank faces when I asked people to do their jobs, too many moments in which I asked myself why I had come back.

However, gradually, as I progressed from Monday to Friday and A New Hope to Return of the Jedi, life started filling again. I found a group of children willing to learn ultimate Frisbee, babysat my goddaughter enough to make a connection again, and, more than anything, continued to run into the people I love in Musho.

Honest with myself and the world, the reason I chose to stay a 3^rd year here is not the deep necessity of health and development work (it certainly exists of course) nor that I won´t receive a replacement volunteer (though I won´t) but because of the relationships I have built with people. This will make my eventually goodbye far harder but remembering that fact—and having my projects get going again—makes this 3^rd year make sense again.

First week back...

Toady I traveled back to Peru after a 6 week leave in the States, encompassing a wedding, reunions and tomfoolery with loved ones, gift-giving and receiving, story-telling and listening. During my morning goodbyes and finally hug to my dad at the airport, I wasn´t sure how I felt—sadness at saying goodbye, with no sense of urgency or finality, but most strangely, a sheer lack of excitement. This dullness continued through my airport time wasting (I tried to tell myself to stock up on American candy bars and magazines, to no avail) and both flights. I didn´t feel scared, nor doubtful, nor worried, but I also didn´t feel the urgency and nervousness I had imagined. It was like going on a business trip to Ohio or to the grocery store to buy eggs- simple, thoughtless and uninspiring. This in itself began to panic me and I tried to analyze but was distracted by Game of Thrones, until I finally arrived in Lima, and was standing in the customs line, behind two confused German women and in front of a blustering American.

It was there that I saw it: in the duty-free store, just ahead, there were four attendants, all unoccupied, all wearing hideous orange matching vests and skirts. There it was—a stunning example of Peruvian inefficiency (any store worth it´s salt will take at least 15 minutes to ring up your purchase, require fashion sacrifices out of its employees, and consider an employee pow-wow more important than customer service).

From then on, I was hooked once more. Through haggling my taxi price, forgetting my ATM card, realizing I had booked at the not-so-nice hostel, crossing my fingers to find my cellphone, and most of all, the wonderful, chaotic ride from the Callao airport to Miraflores, I smiled and giggled like a fat kid with a pocket full of fudge. Even the dirty streets and traffic are like the fart of a loved one—unpleasant, but it´s nice to recognize and remind you who you´re dealing with. Between swerves and near misses in the taxi, I saw graffiti, over-crowded buses and terrible junk cars, stray dogs and cats, tacky billboards, crowded slums and sleeks malls. We passed chifa, pollo a la brasa, tacos, Italian, food carts, tiendas, street vendors and drove through miasmas of frying potatoes and sautéing garlic, of gasoline and sea salt. It was a marvelous gauntlet of reintroduction.

Thank you, Lima, for continually baffling, frustrating and confounding me. It´s good to be back in Peru.

FIRE!!

Starting last Wednesday, I had an unusual view from my home—not just my daily vista of Huascaran, but also of huge clouds of smoke, as wildfires swept the forest below Huascaran. Having read accounts of out of control blazes in the States, I was fascinated and terrified by the sight. My host parents assured me that comuneros, people who held community land in the forest, would fight the fire—with dirt, water or ditches. For three days we worried, watching the black swath grow across the base of Huascaran. Finally, it rained, and I ventured up to see the results. This is the strange landscape that I found.

Starting last Wednesday, I had an unusual view from my home—not just my daily vista of Huascaran, but also of huge clouds of smoke, as wildfires swept the forest below Huascaran. Having read accounts of out of control blazes in the States, I was fascinated and terrified by the sight. My host parents assured me that comuneros, people who held community land in the forest, would fight the fire—with dirt, water or ditches. For three days we worried, watching the black swath grow across the base of Huascaran. Finally, it rained, and I ventured up to see the results. This is the strange landscape that I found.