parades and such

Well it’s the end of September and I realized that this month has been fairly blog-less. I can’t think of an interesting anecdote in particular right now [my life in general has become such an anecdote…], so I will revert to the “old school” update of the past month or so.

A few weeks ago I accompanied a delegation from the Huascaran National Park to Lima for a parade. Now here’s a funny little quip about Peru: they absolutely love parades. I mean any sort of civil, religious, or other holiday there are parades. Not just the large cities like Lima and Huaraz but even in my site they prioritize the perfection of their parades over some things like say, latrines. In other words, parades are a big deal and we got invited to be in one. In Lima. I mean that’s like when Maximus and his crew get called up from the provinces to fight in the Coliseum in Rome [that’s Gladiator for those who are still confused]. The special event that called for the parade was the “Day for Cleanup and Citizenship”. Okay, an interesting theme for this environment volunteer and since I have been trying to work more with the park services I figured helping them out with their delegation would be good “face time” and a nice gesture. Plus, it was an all-inclusive trip to Lima: food, transportation, etc.

So we embarked on a night bus Friday for Lima and got in at 5:30 am Saturday. This left us with plenty of time to have a market breakfast feast and get into our costumes. Now the delegation consisted of 5 park guards, two of the engineers [tourism and education], a youth from a volunteer’s site, and us 3 Peace Corps volunteers. The park guards dressed up as, well, park guards. The two engineers dressed up as alpine mountain climbers and boarded a sweet float of a snow-capped mountain. The youth and another park guard dressed up in a bear and deer costume, respectively. So this left the 3 gringo volunteers. What better costume than the traditional regional dress of our communities?! So we got decked out in our traditional garb: hats, colorful skirts [they vetoed my desire to wear one as well], recycled tire sandals, colorful woven belts, vests, the whole nine yards. And this got us to about 9:15 am. So we milled around the city park and watched the other participants get ready. There were floats promoting recycling, the trash collectors of the area, lots of signs, and even a Peruvian scout troop. We milled in such a fashion until we started around 10:30. Before we started, the head of our group informed the 3 of us volunteers that there would be a band following us playing music for us to dance to. “Cool, we get our own band! Oh, you want us to dance huayno music. Ah. Yes, that makes sense. Damn it.” That was a sample of what went through my head. So off we headed dancing huyano [which for me is a combination of skipping and turning in a series of uncoordinated circles] for the next hour or so. It was a blast. We even got complimented by a professional marinera dancing couple, who asked if “we had taken lessons”. Well, most of my formal huayno training [by most I mean all] consists of being dragged into a group of people after a few too many beers in the campo and just trying to keep up with the rest of the folks in my community. So yes, in a way I am “formally” trained. Anywho, we finished the parade and had some lunch to close up the ceremony. A pretty fun(ny) day in Lima. Not what I expected, but that’s what makes life fun. We spent the rest of the day jaunting around Lima before heading back on another night bus.

Nothing helps you recover from two back-to-back night buses like going on a 3-hour day hike culminating in a frigid glacial lake jump. So that’s what I did the next day before heading back up here to site. A beautiful hike and, I repeat, a frigid lake jump was the best way to wrap up a hectic day in Lima.

I guess that turned out to be at least a semi-interesting anecdote. Cool.

In other news we started our HIV/AIDS prevention project the other week with a group of youth at the school. We are aiming for a series of talks regarding sex-ed , especially HIV/AIDS, some murals, and a puppet show. Nothing to exciting but it should be helpful for the kids. This week we [Alex and I] have prepared a pretty cool environment day for our schools with the guys from the park. They are coming up to give some cool presentations about the plants and animals we have, a puppet show [we love puppet shows], and other activities to motivate the kids to appreciate and protect our environment, especially the park. So that should be fun and hopefully run smoothly…fingers crossed. OH YEAH! I can’t believe I almost forgot to add this. At the beginning of the month my host mom told me something incredible: we ran out of potatoes. Yep, that’s right – no more papas until the next harvest. I was blown away. I thought such an event could never happen expect perhaps after a nuclear war. So yeah, this month has been potato free. We have been eating instead a lot of wheat, rice, pasta, and other tubers (!!) and cereals that we harvested. But fear not, the next harvest is supposed to take place in the next week or so and my beloved tubers will be back on the menu…in full force. Well I think that about concludes the excitement that has been the month of September. A year into this. Crazy.

Anywho, like always I hope things are well with each and every one of you. If you are every in the neighborhood don’t hesitate to give me a call!

Cheers,
Peter