It’s been a really long time since I’ve written anything, and I apologize for that— this is actually a mass email I'm sending out to my friends and loved ones, but I thought it could double as an "update" blog post as well. I'd like to write much more frequently in the coming months and on into the new year.
Essentially, I find myself trying to process the fact that, when Thanksgiving rolls around this year, I will have been in my site for one year. This fact, coupled with how quickly the past few months have passed, is causing me to really examine how I’m spending my time and to think about what I want to get done in the year to come. I arrived in my site on Nov. 22nd last year, and I find myself viewing this coming November 22nd the same way I typically view New Years Eve—a momentous mark on the calendar, a closing of a chapter, the opening of a new one. I find myself sitting in my room at night sometimes, staring at the wall and thinking about changes I want to make in my behavior (like, “run more”, or “start studying Spanish in the evenings”), as if I were compiling some sort of mental list of resolutions. The Peace Corps, for a long time, was just an idea to me, an ideal even, and then when it finally happened it took so long to get used to the reality of it that I feel like I’ve only just recently settled into my own skin. Don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t trade the past year for anything, for I’ve learned a great deal about myself and my fortitude, but I recognize that I’ve been struggling for clarity and confidence the whole way.
Yet something has changed in recent months, little by little, and I now find myself feeling much more centered and motivated to start projects and have fun in the time that I have here. Part of what has done it, I believe, is a certain melding of my worlds. I went home in June to see two of my best friends get married (to each other), and then I spent a wonderful week at the beach with my family and my girlfriend. A few months later, my girlfriend came down here for a visit, and we traveled up and down the coast, from Lima to Tumbes and back down to Lima, stopping at the beach, then at my site, with a few other stops along the way. The trip home, in many ways, helped me to realize that everyone’s O.K. back in the States, that I’m still a part of people’s lives, and that all the familiar places are still there, waiting for me. It charged my batteries, to a certain extent, and soothed the ache of separation I’d been feeling since I left in 2009. Yet Amanda’s trip was what really helped me to unite the world and the life I live here with the world and the life that continues in the U.S. Somehow, showing my daily environs—and the people in it—to her helped me realize that although the two worlds are vastly different, the things that happen when they come together are very special: the relationships that are forged, the struggle to communicate, the memories that are generated. In the weeks that have followed Amanda’s departure from Peru, I’ve listened to my host siblings and my host parents recount their own little stories of things they remember about her visit, as though they were polishing a very rare event in their minds, making sure it is clean and clear and speaks truthfully of the time that passed. It is not often that one, let alone two Americans come to this sleepy little town, and it’s not an even they’ll soon forget.
In many ways, seeing the ripple effect of Amanda’s three-day stay in my site has made me realize that my stay here will have more of an effect on people than I yet realize. Aside from the pressure that I put on myself to “improve the quality of life” here, aside from the pressure that my bosses put on me to show tangible results, the important human interactions—the intangibles—remain.
Here are some intangibles, of late, that have stuck with me … moments that I will never forget, and which, I hope, will make a lasting imprint on the people I’ve been with.
1.) I spent last Thursday night painting a bright red border around a huge world map mural on the wall of the local school. The map is the first project undertaken by a youth art club I started a few weeks ago, and it’s been a blast getting to hang out with the 10 or 12 kids that regularly show up for classes. We meet for a few hours every Wednesday and Thursday afternoon to work on the map, listen to music and goof around. Generally, about half the time is spent throwing Frisbee, and roughly 6 or 7 of the kids actually ‘work’ while the others use the time as a sort of after school social club. I put music on—sometimes American, but usually Peruvian cumbia music or any random Spanish-language songs I can find on my iPod—and we get to work. This past Thursday one of the wildest teens in the bunch, Juan, asked me if I have that song that goes, “Yoooou’re not gunna tek it.” Laughing, I immediately went over the iPod, scrolled through the hundreds of artists, and found, luckily, that I do indeed have Twisted Sister stored among the thousands of songs that I never listen to. That afternoon, we listened to “We’re Not Gonna Take It” about 30 times (consecutively), while Juan did his best to sing along with the English lyrics. I started singing with him, and the resultant ‘harmony’ made everybody laugh so hard that Twisted Sister is probably going to the most-requested artist on our club’s playlist from here on out.
2.) Throwing baseball at night before dinner with my 9-year old host brother, Helson, and Kevin, one of Helson’s best friends. The sound of the ball thwacking into my glove, the motion of winding up and throwing (hard-wired into my body from all those fall afternoons spent at Little League practice), and the time of year all have me feeling a pleasant nostalgia for a more carefree time when I was Helson and Kevin’s age, just learning to throw baseball correctly for the first time myself. Doing this, night after night, often until it gets so dark we can barely make out the white ball in flight, has made me miss my Dad, my brother, and my childhood. This transport, and all the mental and physical associations that come along with it, is something I hold dear right now.
3.) Last night the lights went out, a common occurrence here, and I spent three hours at the kitchen table with my entire host family, talking about U.S. culture, the places I’ve traveled, and leafing through a LIFE photography book entitled “The World’s Must-See Places—Heaven on Earth”, which Amanda brought down during her visit. They were happy that Macchu Pichu had made the cut, excited to see the nearby Galapagos Islands listed, and amazed by the site of Hong Kong, shot at night, with billions of little lights shining from foreground to background, reflecting off of the water and just generally conveying the sheer quantity of people living in that far off metropolis. A picture of Paris caused my host dad, Genry, to pause in wonder for a few minutes, while a winding road through Tuscany caught the eye of my host mother, Esther. Keren, my younger sister, seemed to love the site of the peaked rooftops of Kyoto, while Helson marveled at a shot of a climber poised atop a peak called Mont Blanc, high in the Alps. The lights soon came back on and the family scattered to their different pursuits, but for those two hours we were all transported by pictures of the marvels of this world, transfixed by wanderlust.
And I think I’ll stop there. I could go on and on with these special moments that have given me pause of late—moments where life’s richness seems to finally make its way through my often dulled senses, awakening a joy that any of this is happening at all.
I think one truth of life is that sometimes our senses do become dulled by the forces of routine and stress and overload, but these bright moments that break through the clouds wake us up and give us pause, give us perspective, and remind us to celebrate the small stuff.
I hope that you all are having a wonderful fall, and that life is bringing you some rich, sacred moments amidst the hustle and bustle.
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