Shame on me: a tale of verguenza

Verguenza - the spanish word for shame or embarrassment. Shhh shhh shame on me. I'll cut to the story. Me on stage at a big concert in Olmos, after a few pisco sours, trying to rip the shirt off of the lead singer of Corazon Cerrano and then his backup singer. He was frightened. Smiling with an assursed look that I could be trusted, I yelled "let me" in English I believe I recall. How did I get there?

It was a week before when I was finishing summer school. The world map wasn't yet finished. Sara Lev. came to my site to help me draw in the rest of the countries. After the junior high and some high school kids would draw, it would be so off that I would have to correct almost everything they drew. This added up to over 40 hours of my time outside of working on it during class. I was at the point where I could no longer find the patience or motivation to move forward. Seeing how inaccurate it all was and trying to draw it all myself was just too much. I needed a helper. God bless you, Sara Lev.

Throughout the week, we finished painting the mural and did projects. Each of my three classes was required to complete a community project around the theme of the environment to get a certificate for my class. The younger two classes picked up trashed, particularly broken glass, around the community and worked in the organic farm. I laughed pretty hard when my 1st through 3rd graders were trying to lift pitchforks, shovels, and pickaxes that weighed more than they did. My 4th and 5th graders were more helpful. I had warned them to watched for snakes as the people who owned the field had killed a snake that morning. While the kids were turning the dirt, a skinny poisinous snake slithered out the around the legs of my students as the screamed and leaped away from it. The farmer partially chopped off its head quickly, but one of my best students tried to touch the moving head. A couple days later when they were doing their trash pickup, I screamed snake. Hay una culebra!!! And they all started screaming the running again. I died laughing. I really had them going.

My high school class decided to do recycling promotion and teaching about the importance of not burning trash. I was impressed with their enthusiasm to give door to door presentations (5 minutes or less) at each house. For students who probably had never given presentations before, they were pretty good. They struggled to not get frustrated with one another for messing up parts and talking amongst themselves insteading of paying attention to the mom of the house. I was just so proud of them for their willingness to take on such a big project and with sincere conviction for the environment and health of their community and families.

I had a day before the clausura, which is kind of like a mini graduation from my summer school classes. Girl's night with the Olmos crew was exciting. I needed to cut loose and summer school was over. Projects had been completed. Many projects, many rice and potato meals, many outdoor showers later, I was ready to get a little crazy with the girls. This past month, the volunteers in the Olmos area have had three girl's night, each of which were incredibly uplifting and a much needed break from campo life. Girl's nights consist of lots of ice cream, dancing, drinking, the pollo a la braza place, and more food. This last girl's night was planned to coincide with a big carnival evening in Olmos with all sorts of food venders, a farriswheel, and a concert from a very well known Peruvian band called Corazon Cerrano. I went up for the girl's night and had just finished the last of my summer school classes I taught. Between the satisfaction of the completion of an incredible summer school experience, the atmosphere of the carnival and the amazingness of girl's night, I was estatic. We all were bouncing around. We bought a aerobics Shakira's Africa.

Then we went to the concert. We went where you would expect - front and center, right at the bottom of the stage. We all danced like maniacs. At one point, I start admiring the shirts the band is wearing. It is just like the kind of shirt I have been trying to buy for weeks, light-weight with two front pockets that button. I told Sara I wanted the shirt. And then I jumped on stage, started dancing with the lead singer and tried to rip his shirt off of him. He was terrified. Then two other girls joined me on the stage for a dance around. I tried to rip a shirt off of anothe band member, still without success. The crowd cheered us all on and the band didn't seem to mind us dancing so long as I stopped trying to take shirts off their backs. I'm kind of a celebrity in Olmos now and some people in my town have mentioned being at the concert, hinting with smirks on their faces to my dancing. They made a dvd and Carolyn said there is a track that is completely dedicated to my appearance. A bit of verguenza...although I'm kind of shocked by my own boldness.

That led up to our clausura. I got to say a few words about every student as they accepted their certificate. I got choked up for a few, two in particular really got to me. One was this kickass girl who joined our class for just the last two weeks. Her brothers had been in my classes the whole time and star students. But she blew everyone out of the water with her knowledge, maturity and enthusiasm. She wants to be a missionary for the Catholic church and get a high college degree to be a leader. I can't waitto see how we can work together.

The second girl that really touched my heart was this high school girl who tested my patience everyday. I kicked her out of class for having an attitude and went back to house to ask her back. She came back only to test my patience day after day for the remainder of classes. But the week of the projects she got really excited initiating the grand projects for high school and passionately yelling at group members for not getting their parts right. She didn't handle things perfectly, but she really gave a damn, even pushing us to meet on Sunday to stretch out classes (meeting early and leaving late) to reach more people.


Then I left for Lima and three glorious days of eating whatever I wanted that day. Mediterranean food. Sushi. A Dunkin donut. Oreo milkshake. Yummy yummy sandwich time. Appetizing appetizers at the U.S. Ambassador's house. Beer. Soda that tasted like pancakes. Mini waffles. Yogurt. Beer and pisco sours. Meeting up with my tech trainer Moni who let me be the first PCV to know she is having a baby!!! We went to an amazing juice place where we ran into the famous female boxer, Kina. She was being followed around by a guy with a huge camera pointed at her the whole time she was just trying to get some juice.

At the Ambassador's house, I met former President of Peru, Toledo. He was the one to invited Peace Corps to return to Peru. When he was a kid, he had a volunteer in his house and a few encouraged him to study at Stanford. I told him that my mayor loved him. He asked me where and I said Corral de Arena, Olmos. He had recently made an appearance in Olmos and knew immediately where I was talking about. I told him that my mayor and I hoped that he would win and that we needed landfills in Olmos; the trash problem is horrible. Landfills for the caserios are needed. He gave me a look like "really, you're gonna bring this up at the cocktail party?" Maybe he'll remember it after he wins. Apparently he is leading in the polls with around 60 percent of the projected votes.

I've had a lovely "vacation", enjoying the luxuries of big city life. Today I was reading Rob Bell's book, Drops Like Stars. It talks about the art of suffering - how suffering makes us better; it helps us to fill alive. I am so grateful that I got to cutloose and have so many delightful experiences, but it also helped me to see how alive I felt in the middle of all my pain. Those moments when I'm praying in the dark, hurt and unsure of what will happen next. I think I am going to train for the marathon though I don't really believe I am capable of it if I'm being completely honest. I don't like pushing myself like that.

I was running to the beach in Lima, thinking about the times this past week when I could have made better decisions. I could have eaten less, worked-out more, acted more appropriately in public. I jogged to a rock walk out thingy on the ocean and was giving myself a pretty hard time when this wave slammed so hard against the rocks that it startled me and silenced my thoughts immediately. I felt God shutting me up. I felt God tell me just how much I underestimated the unstoppable power of my God. And then I watched that being said over and over again as wave after wave beat upon the rocks with nothing that could stop it. How much stronger is this god over mine, and yet I have so little faith in God's ability to change me - to completely transform me in good time.