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.