stranded...

My eyes feel heavier than my limbs. I have been chasing sleep for days now with no avail. Lights, noise, or movement have kept the illusive luxury just out of my reach. The introspective thoughts stream through me but the fog that seems to have taken up residents in my brain, forbids me from grabbing them. I struggle to place my muscles in any functional direction.  Coordination, which has never really been my friend, seems more a foe today than in any past memory. My body can hardly stomach the idea of running from gate to gate. Instead I think I may make my bed in the afternoon corridor. I search for my imaginary friend. Some one who can check the boards and continually list me on flight after flight. I wonder if my sleep-deprived delusions can be considered a TSA violation. I wonder if the airlines have a limit on the number of days a person can go without showering and still be allowed on a plane.  

An Afterthought.

After spending some weeks with the orphaned boys at Azul Wasi in Peru two things have become painfully clear to me. The first is that my life and the soul that wrestles within it will never be satisfied until I find a way to make my career a catalyst in which I can help those without a voice in the world, have one. Second, I could use a few pointers in the small yet effective tools of educating children.  

Lima Flows

Recently I was talking with a friend about Peru. When posed with the typical, "How is it" question, I responded with my generic, "It's like any other big city, but everything is in Spanish." Immediately after saying it, I felt estranged from my comment.  Somehow the words that escaped my mouth didn't quite fit with a nagging but unnamed thought in my brain. I searched for a qualification to ease my separation but had none.

 

Over the next few days or maybe weeks I thought more about my knee-jerk response to the city. I thought about this while I mastered the bus systems and memorized the streets. I consideration my statement as I tasted the dishes, fresh fruits and dulces Lima has to offer. I mulled over it while I stood at the cliff of the city overlooking the South Pacific Ocean and watched the wave's crash. And finally I reconsidered my short answer as I watched the housekeepers in the neighborhood work with care and drivers offer directions while pushing buses through traffic. 

 

Lima is not just another big city, rather Lima is a rhythm. Everything ebbs and flows here as smooth as water. When one stops resisting the initially bothersome jerks of the bus and let's go of the seat in front of them, they fall into the same flow. What initially appeared as madness clears into the rhythm of waves. Traffic moves not to slow and not to fast. Drivers consider pedestrians and equally traffic around them and flow with them. In and out of the lines, vehicles of all sizes maneuver and squish four wide in streets designed with three lanes.

 

The food moves with the texture of an old river, neither to spicy nor to plain. It comes heavy and light at the same time and always in waves as it is prepared. The fruit is delicious, extensive, and plentiful, while the vegetables are slower, less frequent and heavier.

 

And finally the people, they move with conscious intention. Each housekeeper or caregiver seems to be thankful for the job, stroking the face of their charge. Each server, salesman, bus caller, and park worker taps through there job with a subtle yet strong contentment for the employment. It seems as though people in Peru never woke up with a list of what the world owes them. Rather, the majority of Limans seem to wake with the sense appreciation for current state of affairs never taking anything for granted.  

 

The locals holler directions while negotiating through traffic and not blinking. Taxi drivers drive as long as it takes to get their fare through a maze of streets for the same price quoted despite the hour of complications. People flow in and out of the numerous parks through the city, marked with the Virgin Mary as an eddy safe haven in otherwise dangerous neighborhoods. In droves people walk in and out of events with no major problems, moving with the same steady strong flow of a river.

 

Lima may not hop like New York, nor pop like Chicago, nor vanish and resurface like London, nor move with the madness of Mumbai. However, Lima moves, it just moves smoother than the rest. This extremely significant yet easily unnoticed detail is what separates this big city from the rest. This cliff high water side monument to water raised, raises the bar on what any other big city should be.  

To Bus or Not to Bus: That is The Questions…

Most people have heard some version of the South American bus systems horror story. The story usually includes chickens and a bus hanging over the side of a cliff. This clichéd tale never allows for any variation of the in town travels and subsequent horrors that happen in the “urban” bus systems far away from the cliffs and chickens. Let me enlighten you.

 

The official bus system is less of a system and more of what American teenagers might refer to as a “Chinese Fire Drill” set in side a caged rat’s maze, with hopes of rich cheeses at the end of the maze. In translation, the wonderful cheese at the end of the maze is your intact body, the rat’s maze is the selections of streets the busses chooses at random to get to said destination, and the “Chinese Fire Drill” remains graphically self explanatory.

 

The buses whip in and out of traffic closer and with what appears as more calm control than a taxi driver in New York could ever wish for. There are generally two lanes on the main road, but here as in other foreign countries, they serve merely as a nice reminder of regulations rather than a law to be followed.

 

The system is a series of three sizes of buses painted a series of colors and usually painted with names of a few street destinations on the side. In every bus no matter the size there is a driver and a caller. Because there is no bus schedules, maps or machine to politely deposit your money in, as in the U.S., there is a Caller. The Caller hangs like a trapezes artist, especially during rush hour, out the door of the bus, hustling fares on and off the buss, calling streets and stops and collecting money from each rider.

 

The money paid is not a straight fare, rather it is based on the distance you travel, and surprisingly enough, even on the busiest days, the callers know exactly where every traveler got on, where they are getting off and has pre-calculated your price in the off chance a person tries to cheat them on a fare.    

 

The busses come in thee sizes: bus, van, and what is most frequently used is the Combi. The Combi is somewhere between a Volkswagen bus and a full sized bus. It seats about fifteen tightly and stands between ten to fifteen more. Capacity depends on the size of the passengers, the relative tolerance of the riders to swing as the buses jolts in and out of traffic, as well as the desires for the Caller to want to hang out the side of the bus.

 

The next size down is the late 70’s Volkswagen turned bus called a micro, pronounced “me-crow”. The micro is an inventive peace of machinery wherein the municipalities here have found a way to raise the top of the van (not by much), throw in a bunch of seats and bars (which are necessary), and call it public transportation. Shockingly in these marvels of welding, they manage to pack upwards of twenty people in them.

 

Given the low ceiling in this type of bus, it becomes especially interesting on days that women wear skirts. Being the men are not quick to offer up their seat to a lady and after one terrible embarrassing ride for myself, I have chosen to avoid these busses if at all possible.

 

I have, as of yet, had the luxury of riding a city bus that was full sized, but they do make up only a small portion of the totality that is the bus system here in Lima.

 

Now that we have covered the necessary basics for getting on a bus, let me offer you a few pieces of advice should you ever find your self on a Peruvian city bus:

 

    One- never, never, never sit in the front seats. It is best not to know how close you are every seven second break check, to crashing into the vehicle in front of you at great speeds.

    Two- as previously mentioned, never where a skirt and ride in a Microw. It’s not good for your reputation and the stares and cat calls come louder than the atrocious sounds made by the shifting of the transmission.

    Three- never expect to get out of even five minute ride thinking you might smell the same as you did when you went in (especially during morning rush hour).

    Four- If at all possible, try not to touch the callers. A day hanging out the side of a bus in a city with nine million people and no real current emissions restrictions makes you filthier than a coal mine worker.

    Five-white is not the most optimal color to where on the bus

    Six – when the Caller yells “abajo” he is not asking politely. Rather, he is demanding for you to hurry and get out of the way or hurray and get off the damn bus. If you fail to listen, you get pulled off, left behind or worse than that, not off at all until the rat maze slows down again.  

    Seven- for gods sake hold on! As the bus whips in and out of traffic, your certain for elbows in placed you would generally rather them not be, if you don’t have a at least one firm grip on the railing.

 

 

Once you have mastered the art of riding the Peruvian bus system, there is nothing left in Lima for one to be afraid of, other than the seriously dangerous ghettos. But that’s another adventure for another day.

Surgeon Generals Warning:

It may be hazardous to your health, pride, and general well being to write and post bad poetry when drinking.

The un-argue

By denying myself nothing, my thoughts ponder through life's loves

Where would I be had I been there still

What would my life look like now

My blood tiptoes at the edge, in my mind waiting for me to respond to myself

Drama with out drama

Love with love with out showing love

His love confuses me

My brain wants to hurt more than my heart and the time is never enough

I reach for his hand and he gives me a few versus

I reach for his versus and he gives me a few nods

I reach for the nods and I get a few emotions

Finally

I think

Finally

We feel together

And the war begins

He said, she said

And now, alone in the night with my trusty light

I wish it were all better

Or I had been all better

Like the end of a good Saturday morning cartoon

I want to respond with the same naivety as ever

Yet I feel robed of my chest of innocence

Though I robed only myself

And now I want to know how to resolve the broken chest

And resolve the unresolved

To fix the fight and fight to fix the non-fights

Argue I say

And argue not they say to the self inflected hole in my soul

The family tree waves at me less a few leafs

Yet after the leafs fall, and the familiar wind moves on

The tree remains unmoved

There lives a faith the leafs will come again in the spring

Life will repair its line

In the quite night, by denying myself nothing, I give my self everything

 

Peru Week 1 - Part 3: No Bones About It…

One of the other benefits to the school is Emily, the On-staff event coordinator. She puts together excursions for students six days a week ranging in price from free to 85 soles (about 25 dollars).

 

Thursday I went on a tour of the San Francisco church (cost: five Soles) in center of Lima. The church is from the late 1600's and had old Catacombs underneath it. This tour was defiantly an experience.

 

I suspect from time to time I have found myself on top of this blindfolded high-horse where I consider myself open minded and worldly. Then, I go and do something like this little tour and get knocked off my high horse of worldliness and back to the ground of ignorant American-ness. Let me explain, I thought the catacombs would be a progression of underground tunnels, what I did not think is that I would be looking at around 25,000 human bodies that were tossed to rot in the basement of this church from the late 1600's to the early 1900's.

 

Let me clarify that the people were no longer rotting, rather in the mid 1960's they made the place a museum and cleaned all the bones and organized them all nice-like into petty designs in wells and holes. What this means to me is that these peoples bodies not only did not have a final resting place but they were scraped, cleaned, sorted and shaped for a shit ton of silly tourists, such as myself, to swing by and have a good look at. Meanwhile the tour guide rushes us to the next pile of bones so he can get through the whole tour and on to his next group of silly tourists. Did I mention that the pieces of bone that had broken or were not pretty had been tossed in a hand full of out of the way cubby holes?

 

I couldn't get through it fast enough and was bothered to say the least. Someone afterwards asked me what I was expecting to see and I felt like a babbling idiot saying, "Well, well I don't know, I didn't think that, I mean that would never happen in the U.S., families would be fighting over bodies to get bones back, and they just wouldn't do that… they, they, we, they, we, well I never, well,"  

 

In hindsight, I wanted to kick my own ass for not knowing better, for being so shocked, for being so ignorant and American. Yet still I find myself a bit out-of-sorts about it. I will use the F-bomb again. What the fuck was that that I saw?

 

Note to self: You don't do well with human remains just lying around. Try to check future school activities to avoid dead people as municipal art projects.