you can't make this stuff up

Okay, so apparently there is this thing in Peru called “crazy hour”. When someone throws a party, for any occasion (weddings, formal get-together’s, birthdays, etc.), you can hire a group of people to come to your party and throw a crazy hour. In the case of the crazy hour I experienced, it was a first birthday party. Fifteenth and first birthday parties are a big time in a girl’s life and come with grand parties. One of the community members had a daughter who was turning one. My host mom was catering the entire party, which consisted of a couple hundred people. She, my sisters worked all day to get the food and the elaborate cake made. I’ll post pictures of the cake, because I’ve never seen a birthday cake like it. It was so elaborate and creative – a Tinker Bell cake with candy flowers, trees, magical mushrooms and even the Neverland treehouses. Crazy! In America, the first birthday is usually a few family members over at the house, maybe a meal and an itty bitty cake for the baby to enjoy. This party was probably a couple thousand soles.

Crazy hour seemed normal for a first birthday, a clown to entertain the kiddos. The clown was wearing green eyeshadow and pink blush, white lips with a black nose. His outfit was orange with some wicked sneaker-style clown shoes. But then the clown starts dancing very provocatively. Moving his hips a little more than I expected, and then thrusting his pelvis to the music. He walks over to an older woman and gives her a lap dance! I’m freaking out and wondering if anyone else finds this inappropriate when he walks over to a man and starts giving him a lap dance. He stops to make a few jokes and then he is waving his crock and his butt in other people’s faces. I started looking around for the reactions of the crowd and my fellow volunteers.

Two girls (maybe 16 years old) ran out with the clown. They were wearing hot pink school girl uniforms that just covered them. They started dancing for the crowd. I was waiting for the stripper pole to fall from the ceiling. The clown called all the kids to the middle and had a dance competition. It stayed semi-clean except for a few sexual dance moves on the part of the clown and the kids. And then there was a moment where I thought the clown was about to make two kids kiss. I was sitting in my seat, very uncomfortable, very reserved. The clown looked over and came up to me and said something. I didn’t understand, but it made me realize I needed to chill out a bit.

Everyone ended up dancing the kumbia in a circle. People running the party came around with funny animal hats, glittery antennas, foam ties, and shiny masks for everyone to wear. We had long balloons to wave in the air as we danced. Then the clown and the “strippers” put two chairs in the middle and started pulling a man and a woman into the middle for lap dances. One by one, many of the guests were selected and pulled to the middle. Every gringo in the place was spotted and selected. The clown started walking towards me and I started screaming “no, no, no!” There was a moment where the clown seemed to be thinking whether or not to leave me alone. Before I could do anything about it without making a big scene, that clown grabbed my arm and sat me down. I received this incredibly graphic lap dance from a clown with a couple hundred people watching, many with cameras. All the while I’m screaming no, no, no. The men were given lap dances from the girls, often both at the same time. And all of this took place at a first birthday party. It is a story that few can tell. You can’t make this stuff up.

In the Beginning

I am writing this after being here for 11 days, but I felt it was important to go back a bit and talk about when I first arrived. Our group of 79 volunteers met up in Washington D.C. for staging. My cousin Kristen, her boyfriend Andy, and their friend Chris picked me up. We got stopped while we were putting my luggage in the car. The security officer said it was because Kristen's tags were expired. We're sure it was because Andy didn't have any shoes or a shirt. We arrived at the hotel and my roommate was already out on the town.

After we ate some terrific pasta that Kristen made, we headed out for a night on the town. On the way, a foreign student from Greece walked up to us and asked if she could talk with us. She was doing a fellowship in D.C. while working on her Ph.D mideival art at Harvard. She said that Andy and Kristen reminded her of her “Bohemian” friends in Greece. We went to Paradiosio Pizzaria on M St. The place smelled of olives, which I thought smelled more like baby poop. The pizza looked great and I would definitely recommend it because of the five page menu of beer. A-mazing.

After saying my goodbyes to my cuz and new friends, I finally got to meet my hotel mate, Gina. Gina just graduated with a Religious Studies degree from Yale. She was one of 10 graduating with that particular degree. The next day, I met many people I would be spending the next 10 weeks with (and some I would get to know very briefly). The Health volunteers left us after the weekend was over. Water and Sanitation (Wat-San) would end up at the same site with us in Santa Eulalia.

When we arrived in Lima, it was after 9pm. We didn't actually leave the airport for the retreat center until after 11pm. Apparently, the big buses that were supposed to be picking us up got into a car accident on the way. We ended up piling into these small vans. Keep in mind that all of us are carrying at least 3 bags that total out to about 140 pounds. So here we are, packed in these vans with our bags stacked to the roof of the vehicles. I'm stressing about the van getting into an accident and the damage these bags could do to us. If we were to flip the wrong way, we would be crushed. So I'm insisting that everyone should untie the seatbelts that have obviously never been used. I get mine and frantically try to loosen the string around another volunteers belt. We get the seatbelt situation worked out just in time to pull over on the side of the highway and wait for half an hour. We're on this crazy highway with cars zooming by and our driver exits without explaining. Ten minutes later, he's back, but only to eat a sandwich. I guess the other 6 or so buses were not ready and so we were going to wait for them...on the side of death's highway.

We finally get rolling and our driver is doing a good job of navigating through the roads. There seemed to be no rules at smaller roads, just hundreds of cars coming in different directions trying to push there way through. We learned fast that honking is not a rude exclamation, but a way of communication. It signifies changing lanes, speeding up, “get out my way” and “hey, would you like a ride?”. At this point, it is really late at night and we are all exhausted. Some have fallen asleep, but I am fighting it since this is my first hour in Peru. I'm to capture every image. The buildings are painted colorfully under all the dirt and graffiti. There are dogs everywhere. People are congregating outside of houses and businesses, many circling up on cinder-blocks to share a beer (Peruvian drinking ritual).

I kept falling asleep and waking up to the van screeching to a halt and in different dangerous states. One time, I fell forward and woke up while doing so, screaming and near tears. Our driver was a bit slower than the other drivers and they would pull up beside us and wave for him to go faster. We ended up losing the group and getting lost for about an hour. When we finally arrived, all of the other volunteers had already unloaded and had settled in. All of the other drivers were hanging out in the parking lot and applauded and cheered for our driver for his excellence sense of direction and know-how. We stayed at a retreat center. The food in Peru is pretty great and I loved it right away. It is interesting to note that, though Peru grows coffee as a major export, everyone drinks instant coffee. I’ve gotten used to that difference.