Day in the Life

Sunday 30 October 2011, 9:30pm

A Boring Day

I wake up whenever I wake up, usually around 7:30am. I might work out, I might watch an episode of 30 Rock (or How I Met Your Mother or Breaking Bad). I might do both. I eat breakfast—oatmeal or bread with some kind of topping, coffee. Meanwhile I leave a large pot of water heating on the stove so that after breakfast, I can take a bath. Everything useful to do gets canceled or was never scheduled in the first place, so I check my email at the library (for 2 hours) and harass Katherine while she is at work. I would call Greg to pass the time until lunch, but he is in America (L) so I watch more 30 Rock instead. Lunch. A nap. 30 Rock. A walk to buy fruit for dinner. I try to get through another chapter of Feast for Crows, but dear God does it pale in comparison to the last book, and I can't call Greg again. Instead I go for an aimless walk and then memorize all of the lyrics to "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying" by Belle & Sebastian, and journal about how on the 10^th listen, I picked up on how it is actually a very uplifting song. "And then, with a winning smile, the boy/ with naivety succeeds!" I might do some yoga. I start to blog but don't have anything interesting to say. Sleep.

This day has sadly happened many times over, with slight variation (for example, when Greg was still here, I would probably call him 3 times) but less and less so as my work with the Comité de Limpieza Pública (Sanitation Committee) in San Jose picks up.

A Day Bursting With… Waiting

I wake up at 6:30 so I have enough time to work out, breakfast and bathe before my 9am meeting at the Municipality, but hit the snooze button a few times so that I don't have time to work out. Except then I finish everything else by 8:30 and end up waiting around until 8:55 when I can leave for the Municipality without being early. Should I have slept longer or worked out for 25 minutes? I probably should have done both, because the taller on rellenos sanitarios that I was supposed to attend doesn't start until 10. Of course, I really only attended so that I could talk more with the consultant who is doing the garbage diagnostic for the entire province and more concretely worm myself into the project, but afterwards he has to rush off to another meeting.

After lunch, all I have to do is 1) make copies of the survey I need for Sunday, and 2) have someone proofread the invitation I designed for the street cleaning campaign, before making copies of that as well. But after an hour, neither is completed and I'm panicking because it is 3pm on a Friday and people are already starting to leave. Why is it that I am working with the only people in the Municipality who ever seem to be really busy?? After two hours, I have my surveys copied, but only because I twice interrupted Adolfo's meeting with a disgruntled sanitation worker and he sent me across the street to put them on the Municipality's account at the libreria (their own machine was being a brat). After three hours, I am the only one left in the office when Barrantes finally comes back to proofread the invitation. He wants to change the entire thing. He swears that even though Monday and Tuesday are holidays (Day of the Dead), he will fix it himself and have the copies made by Tuesday night so that I can deliver them to the colegio on Wednesday morning (the cleaning is scheduled for Thursday so…). Praying for this to actually happen takes the form of a movie on my laptop, a chicken sandwich con todas las cremas, and an early bedtime.

Hurry up and wait—this was just last Friday, but I have had a lot of similar days in the past, too.

I still do not know if my invitations are finished…. Guess I have to wait until Monday!

A Surprisingly Successful Diagnostic Day

Sunday, the day I finally got my trash diagnostic surveys in San Jose completed, was actually pretty great. The Comité de Limpieza Pública (Sanitation Committee) had found me six girls around 17-20 years old who volunteered to do the survey with me, and I had already met with them to go over the questions.

I leave my house at 7:30am to be in San Jose by 8:00, and they were all there by 8:30 (close enough!), wearing the ridiculous neon orange jerseys Barrantes (my socio at the Municipality for this project) picked out to identify them as part of the committee. In three teams of two, plus me, we finish almost all of the 100 surveys by the time we meet up again at 12:30. Success! The girls decide that they would rather finish the remaining surveys before breaking for lunch—I stay behind to read over the ones they have already done in case I have questions about their handwriting. I am thrilled to find that my team of jovenas has done an excellent job answering all of the questions, and based on the number of "No sé"s written next to the question about what diseases can be caused by burning trash, they did not give people answers. They listened to me when I told them not to! The ensalada on the plate: I am invitar'd to some surprisingly delicious potatoes with rice and lots of literal salad on top, so I don't have to buy lunch!

I'm home by 2:00 and spend the next hour doing laundry (including those absurd jerseys, since I feel bad already about how much work Rosalía is already doing without compensation—they make the clothes line on my roof GLOW!). I'm in a good mood, so I don't really notice I'm tired until after I've talked to my neighbor for an hour about what I'm working on and heard his opinion on everything from development work to oil made from some kind of nut in the jungle that cures allergies, and my Spanish starts to majorly suffer because, man, I've had a long day in the sun. I celebrate with a bath and by buying Edam pre-sliced cheese (it's a treat because it costs 3 soles, mantequeso only costs 1 but isn't as… cheese-like). Mom calls me from America, and then I eat mini cheese and tomato sandwiches--it is probably good that I didn't have any basil or they would have been too amazing for me to handle after such a great day.

(Actually I really wish I had remembered to get basil…)

And now here I am blogging, glad that I can wrap this blog post up with a good day after its rather dim beginning. Sweet dreams!

10 Reasons Why Seeing Aerosmith in Lima Doesn't Mean We Left Peru for the Night

Seeing Aerosmith last night was (well, besides pretty freakin' awesome) like a little slice of America down here in Peru--almost.

1. Pre show, the best part of my day was befriending a cat in Parque Kennedy. He jumped into my lap!!

2. Walking towards the stadium, we were harassed by countless people selling unofficial merch and successfully bartered to get 2 tshirts for 30 soles. We also bought 2 cans of warm beer from... some random dude.

3. Most aggressive ticket scalpers ever! "Entradas entradas entradas! Here, let me wave them in your face some more in case you didn't hear me the first 10 times!" Why would I be continuing to walk towards the door if I didn't already have a ticket?!

4. Steven Tyler opened with, "Bbbbbuenas noches Limaaaaaaa!" and I believe attempted to say something else in Spanish that I didn't understand. He made a few other comments in English, but mostly just avoided the whole talking thing--I was very OK with this!

5. The crowd is not a sea of lighters/cell phones during romantic songs, but video camera lights throughout the entire concert--by today I bet there are already videos on sale in all the markets and families have relived the entire thing several hundred times. I would have brought my camera but since I wasn't sure how crazy it would be, I didn't take anything except a few bills I stuffed in my bra :) Turns out it was pretty chill... ah well.

6. During "Walk This Way," a random dog wandered down our aisle...

7. ...followed shortly by a vendor yelling, "Salchichas salchichas papitas papitas salchichas papitas!"

8. There was a woman selling toilet paper outside the bathroom for 50 centimos.

9. Leaving the stadium we were greeted by a sea of combis, cobradors yelling where they would take us once they could get out of the horrific traffic jam (we just walked out of the craziness and found a cab instead).

10. As soon as we got into the cab, we were assaulted with Peruvian cumbia music again. Sadness.

Also, in case anyone was wondering, Steven Tyler can, in fact, still sing pretty damn well. Something sounded a little off during "Sweet Emotion," but I am pretty sure it was something with a speaker or guitar, not his singing. And he looks eerily similar to how he looked years ago--eerie meaning Botox. Lots and lots of Botox :)

Occupy Wall Street: What is the point, exactly?

I have been casually following what is going on with the Occupy Wall Street protests via Reddit—hipster punk girl posts a picture of herself getting arrested, yay!  And I hear tales of shirtless hippies with drums and overworked police officers from my eye witness into Manhattan, the lovely Katherine.  And I do see that is it doing some good.  The way the movement is spreading, the protest has so much volume that people cannot help but listen, finally drawing attention to some of the more important issues worth making noise about.

 

But I cannot figure out who is in charge over there.  More importantly, I cannot figure out the main point of these protests—probably because there isn't one?

 

I get it: times are difficult, policies that favor the wealthiest 1% of the population and ignore the rest are unfair, change is needed.  Obama told us that "Yes we can!" except we don't even have jobs.  It sucks, and the "We are the 99%" slogan is a great way to draw attention to that.  So I agree that protesting is necessary, don´t get me wrong.  I´m just not sure that this is the best we can do.

 

Imagine that you are the boss of a small company, and one of your better employees comes to you one day to complain.

 

Employee:  Boss, I am getting frustrated. 

Boss:  Really?  What's wrong?

Employee:  I go home every day with a headache and I am not sure that I enjoy my job anymore.

Boss:  Wow, sorry to hear that.  Is there anything I can do to help?

Employee: …

Boss:  Anything?

Employee: …

Boss:  Well, I am sorry to hear that you are frustrated.  Now please let me get back to work, I am a busy man.

 

As the boss in this situation, your employee does not really give you anything to work with—he came to complain, but not with a solid complaint.  You know he has a headache, you know he is frustrated, but since he hasn't given you anything concrete that you can do to help, and you are too busy to continue questioning him, you will likely do… nothing.  His headache can suck it up.

 

Now, the government shouldn't need explicit directions from its people on how the country should be run—that's their job.  But what if they aren't following through with what we elected them to do?  Then I believe it is the people's responsibility to speak up.  Protest our little hearts out. 

 

But like the aforementioned boss, our elected officials are busy people.  They are not going to risk having objects and insults thrown at their faces to go ask the protesters, "Excuse me, I see you want some change, but what change, exactly, are you looking for me to make?"  Just complaining isn't enough, you need to make a complaint.

 

An essential part of a successful protest is a clear, specific goal.  Of course, any protest is going to attract the crazies—but so long as there is an inescapably clear complaint being promoted, the anarchists and the hippies playing drums in the background won't seem as absurd, and may actually be helpful.  The noise they make will put more force behind the point, rather than dominating the entire protest.  America has seen enough loosely conglomerated protestors on the part of the Tea Party, and my fear is that the OWS movement could be labeled as the equivalent, albeit on the opposite end of the spectrum.

 

A great Op-ed piece in the NYTimes recently commented: "A better critique of the protests is the absence of specific policy demands. It would probably be helpful if protesters could agree on at least a few main policy changes they would like to see enacted. But we shouldn't make too much of the lack of specifics. It's clear what kinds of things the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators want, and it's really the job of policy intellectuals and politicians to fill in the details."  (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/krugman-confronting-the-malefactors.html?_r=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss).  

 

I respectfully disagree.  Americans are smart people, and while noise is helpful, I believe that offering a smart solution would put the Occupy Wall Street (and Chicago and New Orleans and everywhere else) protestors miles ahead of their nemeses in the Tea Party.  For example, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is currently being blocked by Republicans—push for that to be resolved.  The repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act effectively removed the separation between investment banking and commercial banking, which is what allowed commercial banks to "gamble" with peoples mortgages in the first place—push for that to be reinstated.  I see these issues showing up more and more, which is a step in the right direction, but more focus would be helpful.

 

So OWS, I am a little disappointed in you so far, and hope you continue to really zero in on the actual solutions that you are demanding.  You are certainly drawing attention to some important issues, and I give you credit for your volume, but I don't believe that pointing at the problem is enough—you need to ask for something concrete, some kind of solution.  Otherwise all you are doing is asking the media to parade the crazy side of Liberal all over the headlines and annoying the crap out of anyone living in Lower Manhattan.

Figuring out the "Why" of Huamanchuco´s Festival de los Negritos

I spent the last 5 days up in Huamanchuco with Greg, first visiting the baños termales (hot springs) in Yanasara, and then staying in Huamanchuco itself for the Festival de los Negritos. 

Yes, Festival de los Negritos translates to the "Festival of Black People."  And it really does involve kids and adults alike painting themselves face, hands and feet in black paint and dancing around the city.  I am still trying to figure out where it came from.  Last week I posted a link on Facebook/Google+ to the Wikipedia page about the Festival de San Blas in Spain--it was at the time the only information I could find that remotely explained why, in a sierra town where there probably isn´t a single black person, this tradition might have started:  In Spain, according to legend (according to Wikipedia), there was once a family of 7 brothers who came to dance at the Festival de San Blas and beg for money. After 16 years doing 16 different dances, they apparently ran out of dances and decided to instead paint their faces black to avoid recognition (because that makes sense). Now Spain celebrates their dances (in blackface) the 2-3 of February, and apparently Huamanchuco, Peru does the same on October 4th.  (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Negritos_de_San_Blas)

But then on Sunday, I had lunch with Greg´s family and other Huamanchuco volunteers, and from what they have gathered, this festival is completely separate from Spain´s (there are TWO blackface festivals in the world?!).  For one, it coincides with the festival for San Francisco de Asis (not San Blas), hence the difference in dates.  And according to Huamanchuco´s legends, there was once a slave who died, and then came back to life with a rose in his mouth, the symbol of San Fran himself.  How the slave died, and why the saint chose this particular slave to resurrect, remains a mystery to me, but whatever the reason, the memory of this miracle is still celebrated during his festival.  

Once I got over being horrified by the thought of what would happen if anyone tried to replicate this in the United States, the costumes were pretty intense.  There was a whole parade of students dressed up as San Francisco de Asis (with black and white saintly-looking robes), barefoot and painted black from head to toe, dancing around the plaza.  Earlier in the day, they had "painted" giant murals on the streets around the plaza with colored sawdust and fresh flowers, and unfortunately the parade went right through them and destroyed the drawings before I could get a picture.  You´ll just have to take my word for it that it was pretty neat.

Of course, something that Greg and I ate in Yanasara (or was it the street gelatina we had right before we left?) made me sick, so I spent most of the actual festival day in the hotel, sneaking out to watch the parade from the balcony for all of 2 minutes.  Such is the life of a PCV :)