Goodbye: Host Parents

I went to Lima last weekend to say goodbye to my study abroad host parents, Marilú and Pepe. These are the people that first made me feel at home in Peru, and I doubt that I would be here now if it weren't for the love and welcome.

I'll be back in Lima for Christmas, but they'll be away so I made sure to have some time to see them.

Hasta la próxima!

Praying for Rain

In Boston, weather affects the quality of your day. But a spell of bad weather one month is unlikely to affect your entire year. That's the difference between city-dwellers and farmers. For us city dwellers weather affects our outfits. For farmers, weather affects everything.

In September, everyone planted their fields with corn. The corn stalks have since sprouted and grown. In some places they are taller than I am. They're still green, for now. I say for now because it hasn't rained in a long time. People are starting to worry. Herman Rosario says that all the corn in Juliaca (a few hours away) is dry and yellow and useless. People will lose a lot of money if it doesn't rain soon.

Thanksgiving

The feast isn't until Thursday, but we celebrated with our Peruvian and Spanish friends on Sunday. Here's some pictures, and a beautiful blessing that captures the spirit of Thanksgiving.

You're Invited

Sunday, November 20th

2PM, in the Mountain House

Thanksgiving Dinner

Christingles

So I've got three weeks of classes left to teach (so little!), and I was looking online for cool activities (so that the kids will always remember as the cool teacher) when I came across this strange looking Christmas project:

Noted With Translation – Solidarios en Acción

Dear Father or Mother of the Education Institution Fe y Alegría 44 – Andahuaylillas, PREVIO a cordial greeting, the following is in order to invoke the spirit of solidarity and benefit a student from the Preschool Level who urgently needs an operation and whose mother does not have the necessary economic resources, please send a colaboration of 2.00 nuevos soles* tomorrow we thank you in advance for your support.
Attentively,
The Administration

Usually, Noted With Translation posts are short and sweet. I keep my commentary brief. My intention is to let the message itself shine. Today, I'm going to be a bit wordier than usual.

A comunicado is a message sent out to all parents. The administration sends out comunicados about school cancelations, important school events, and reminders to pay fees. Think of it as the Peruvian equivalent of a robo-call.

This comunicado is an example of solidarity at its finest. Most people here don't have enough money for major operations, and the national health insurance doesn't cover very much besides basic doctor's visits. There is no rich part of town in Andahuaylillas where this mother could ask for money to help her child. To be clear, it's not that everyone's poor, it's just that no one is rich.

So the school (which, as I learned recently LINK, also doesn't have extra money lying around) decided to step up and call upon the wider school community. Part of Fe y Alegría's identity is that parents are considered a vital part of the school community, and are expected to play an active roll. I'm sure that most, if not all, parents stepped up and sent 2 soles with their child the next day. I don't know if they raised enough money for the operation, but I do know that this is what it large scale community looks like.

The title of this post is, ironically, difficult to translate. Translating the phrase “Solidarios en Acción” requires an explanation of the word solidario. It's the adjective form of solidaridad, which directly translates to “solidarity.” Here I bump up against the bilingual problem in that there is no English word to fully connotes solidario. It's the reality of being “in solidarity with someone.” You can complement a person by saying they are “very solidario” meaning that they are dependable and empathetic and come aware of other people's pains and willing to share that pain and help end it. So I don't have a translation for my title. But I think you get the idea. If you can think of a translation for solidario, leave it in the comments.

*Peru's money is offically Nuevos Soles, though it is generally just referred to as soles. Nuevo Sol translates to “New Sun.” Interestingly, the last 3 iterations of government issued money in Peru are named for the sun. The Sol de Oro (Spanish for  GoldenSun) was the currency from 1922-1985. It was followed by the Inti (Quechua for sun) 1985-1991. Since 1991, Peru has been using the Nuevo Sol (New Sun). The principal deity of the Incas was the sun. Hmm...I wonder if there is a connection.

Fois et Joie

Imagine you have a staff of bilingual Quechua-Spanish speakers* and you have a Cameroonian ??? Jesuit who speaks French-English visiting to learn about the work your staff does. How do you get facilitate a conversation between them?

Noted With(out) Translation - Quechua Safety Message

Cromotex, the bus company we took to Arequipa and back, played its safety instructions once in Spanish and again in Quechua. You can tell it's aimed at a different clientele than Cruz del Sur, which plays the safety message in Spanish and English. 

I can't translate the text above for you because I don't speak Qeuchua, but based on the images I think it's advising passengers about the regulations that limit how long a single driver can be behind the wheel before switching off with a second driver.

Coloquio Sur 2016 - Part 2

The Coloquio itself was a wonderful event. We arrived to the Arequipa bus station at 5:30AM and squeezed into taxis to go downtown. After a tour of the Jesuit church, everyone had 4 hours to explore the city and get lunch. I'd told the students to bring money, but also gave each 10 soles to help cover the costs of food. In the afternoon we headed over to Colegio San José, a private Jesuit school that is right across the street from Manresa, where I stayed before ReO/DisO. My students were very impressed with the facilities, which looked like a lot of well-off suburban high schools in the US. Students and young adults from Tacna, Arequipa, and Arica, Chile arrived soon after us.

The theme for the Coloquio was “Misericordiosos en Acción.” It's a play on the Jesuit slogan “comtemplatives in action” that I would translate as “Merciful (people) in action” that ties in with Pope Francis's Year of Mercy. The idea is that mercy requires concrete action and not just a general attitude of friendliness.

One of the strongest aspects of the Coloquio was the “experience.” They divided all the participants into groups of 10 and sent each group out to do different acts of mercy. My group was sent to work with children who come from extreme poverty and rough home lives. Other “experiences” involved visiting a children's cancer ward, talking with street vendors,* and talking with people at a retirement home. This practical component really drove home the message of the Coloquio.

Plenty of fun was had throughout, but the most fun was the Cultural night on Saturday. Each region presented a cultural performance. There was traditional dancing (from Cusco), modern dance (from Arequipa) and sketch comedy (Tacna). The rest of the night was dedicated to a dance.

Our bus left Arequipa Sunday night at 7:30 and arrived Monday morning at 4:30. I don't know if the 6 students went to school because I was away doing a special task assigned by Pd. Eddy,** but I left a note in the staff room asking teachers to excuse absence and homework.

I felt a little bit old among most of the participants but still managed to enjoy getting to know people from other parts of the country. The students had a great time and got to reflect and live a formational experience. It reminded me a lot of Kujenga, the Black-Catholic youth retreat in which I participated during high school. That was an experience that taught me a lot about how to reflect on and live out the faith. My prayer is that my students were similarly touched during the Coloquio.

*Very poor people in Peru often sell cheap candies to scrape money together for food.

 **More on that next week.

Coloquio Sur 2016 - Part 1

I mentioned the Coloquio (Colloquium) in Busy, one of my first posts this month. Well, the Coloquio is over, and it was a success. But there was plenty of trouble along the way to that success.

Our first issue to handle was money. The pastoral office of FyA 44 has none, which makes it difficult to pay for 5 people (4 students, 1 teacher) to travel across the country and participate in an event that has a registration fee. I talked with Pd. Eddy about money and he informed me that the school has no extra money lying around. So we turned to the biggest source of income for Jesuit projects in the Cusco region: tourism.

Thousands of tourists come to Andahuaylillas every year just to see the Sistine Chapel of the Americas. The Peruvian tourists pay 10 soles, and the foreign tourists pay 15. That money adds up to a lot of resources for local projects. Much of that goes to fund the parish social programs that Erin and Lauren work at, but Pd. Calilo is a savvy enough businessman to know to have funds on reserve. Hna. Rosario and I talked with him and he told us that he could cover the costs as long as the students put in some effort to raise money.

We decided to do a raffle. Every student in the high school bought a ticket for 1 sol. Three prizes were given out: a jacket, a new leather soccer ball, and 100 soles. The jacket and soccer ball were both claimed, but the winner of the 100 soles must have lost their ticket because they never showed up.

Grad School Applications and Translations

As regular readers know, I am applying to master's in education programs for next year. I'm highlighting my experience working as an educator at FyA 44 for the last two years in various ways – it would be foolish not to – but it comes with a special complication.

All applications require recommendations. The general guideline is to have one recommendation from a former professor and then one or two letters from supervisors. If you've worked in education, as I have, it's all the better to have recommendations from your supervisors in the educational context. For me, that means getting a rec from either Pd. Eddy or Hna. Rosario. The complication is that neither of them speak English.

I've talked with the admissions departments of all the programs I'm looking at and they've all agreed to accept a recommendation written in Spanish with an official translation attached. Obviously I have the skills to translate a document into English,* but as the document in question is a recommendation for me, that would be unethical. So I coordinated with the parish administrator in Andahuaylillas, who knows absolutely everyone in Cusco, and found a translator. Now Hermana Rosario has both her original letter and the official translation, which she can email to the four programs to which I'm applying.

It was a complicated process, but I think it was well worth it.

*I've done some translations for the Andean Barroque Route website and documents.

Dance Video

Here's a video of the dance that we presented the Festival of Folkloric Dances honoring the 21st anniversary of FyA 44. The audio is pretty low for the first 5 or 6 minutes, but that's what happens when people are filming on their cellphones. Enjoy.

(If you're looking for me, I'm the big white guy.)

Noted with Translation - Bread v. Food

From the cafeteria at FyA 20

The first panel says: Don't throw food or bread on the floor.
The second panel says: Don't play with the food.

This raises two important questions:

1. If bread isn't food, what is it?
2. Can I play with my bread?

FyA 44 Anniversary - Festival de Danza Folkóricas

The Festival of Folkloric Dances is the highlight of FyA 44's anniversary celebrations. Every afternoon for the two weeks before the festival the school is open late as teachers and students spend hours practicing. The festival itself, as you may remember, lasts for hours. It's scheduled to start at two o'clock, and opens by 3. Then it lasts for at least 4 hours of dance after dance after dance. Parents, students, and staff all participate.

Piano in the Andes

Last May, Peruvian Pianist Juan José Chukisengo, came to Quispicanchi to do lend his services to the service of the Jesuit projects. Among everything else that happened last week, Chukisengo's visit didn't take the spotlight, but it was still a big part of the week.

Once again he gave a benefit concert at the Compañía in Cusco and then a series of free concerts at towns and communities up and down the province of Quispicanchi. I got to listen to him three different times: at his concert in the church in Andahuaylillas, and performances for the high school and elementary school students of FyA 44.

The three concerts were very different. The concert for the people of Andahuaylillas was a fairly straightforward concert. He introduced each piece and then played it. The concerts at school were different. Mr. Chukisengo approached it as a sort of musical lecture. He highlighted music as order from chaos; from so many keys comes the sounds of a symphony. He made much of the comparisons between the visual art of the church (the locale for the high school concert) and the auditory art of music.

The elementary school students were probably the best audience. They were delighted with a change in the routine, and Chukisengo's manner of presenting to children is great for that age group. The concert for Primaria was very similar to last year's – including many of the same numbers and the same participatory bit with 6 students playing on his piano with him.

I've been here for 20 months, and Chukisengo is the only artist I've seen come through and give concerts like this. Far too often, the “fine”* arts are reserved for the rich. It seems to me that Chukisengo doesn't see it that way. In all his concerts he presents music as something accessible to all, giving students the chance to play on his piano, speaking to the transcendence of music, of it's ability to reach people of all cultures. I don't know how Mr. Chukisengo got connected to the Cusco area Jesuits, but I'm glad he did. Once a year, he leaves the concert halls of Europe (he lives in Germany) and lends his services to the Andean people. The work Chukisengo does includes two aspects of service that rarely interact. His benefit concert raises money, and his community concerts serve the community directly. Anyone interested in serving the poor could do worse than following this pianist's example.

*The word “fine” in fine arts itself carries a tone of superiority that's never sat well with me. What makes Beethoven better and Tupac?

A Progressive Bathroom in Peru

As an animal, I am used to excreting waste on a daily basis. As a traveler, I know just how different the experience can be based on where you are (see one of my earliest posts, “Pooping in Peru” for more details. As a man who often used public bathrooms, I've made an interesting observation: most of the stalls in the men's bathroom are empty most of the time. I've also observed that a line for the men's bathroom is practically a freak occurrence, while a line for the women's bathroom, while not quotidian, is hardly a surprise. At some point back in high school it occurred to me that it would be much more efficient if women waiting in line could enter the men's bathroom and take care their of their business in the unused stalls. It was just a passing idea.

When I first read about the drama in North Carolin about the nature of people's genitalia when they are peeing and/or pooping in the same locale, I remembered my idea of women using the empty stalls in the men's room. What if, instead of separate bathrooms based on the business between our legs, there was just one giant bathroom? There could be urinals for men who only need to urinate, and plenty of stalls for women and men who have to take care of some more serious matters. Having bounced the idea off some friends, I've learned that some women are weirded out by the idea of men standing at urinals. This could be easily solved by having a separate urinal area of the bathroom, hidden by a wall. This is already how some men's bathrooms are divided up (right for pee, left for poop, wash your hands on the way out).

There is something that repulses us culturally about sharing bathrooms. It just seems...icky. It brings out the old "girls have cooties" public health campaigns from elementary school. But I've shared bathrooms with plenty of women (mother, sister, community mates, etc). It could be argued that those are single occupant bathrooms that I don't use at the same time. But I also can remember going out with a group one night and everyone needing a bathroom break. The women's bathroom was out of order, so all of us rushed into the men's bathrooms. The girls took stalls, the boys took urinals, and everyone used sinks afterwards. Waste excretion handled, we continued about our group outing.

But it wasn't until recently, at a Chinese restaurant in Cusco, that I came across a public bathroom that was actually designed for multiple occupants of different sexes.

Look at the sign above the door.

There was a shared sink area. Two stalls were designated for women, and two for men. One of the two men's stalls had two urinals instead of a toilet.

The idea was that each person could enter and handle their business, and then wash hands next to each other without catching cooties.

There're plenty of opinions and ideas about how to deal with the reality that everyone pees, but that some people do it standing up and others do it sitting down. I'm not proposing that every mall in the US change over to gender neutral bathrooms,* but gender neutral bathrooms are worth considering. If it can happen in Peru, it can happen in the States.

*except the ones in N. Carolina, because that would probably be illegal.

Visiting Groups: University of Omaha

Before the two Texas high schools came, a group of students came from the University of Omaha. I barely interacted with them, so I don't have any thoughts on them as visitors. But the final product of their visit is this video promoting the Andean Baroque Route. 

The production quality could be higher, but it's the best English language promotion video I've seen. I hope you enjoy this glimpse into the work the Jesuit-run parishes do here. 

By the way, this is an example of a useful and important service that a group can provide in a short term visit.

Visiting Groups: Dallas Jesuit

It summer vacation in the United States, which means the parish is hosting lots of different groups. Last week, one of our favorite groups came. It's an all boys high school from Texas called Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas. We refer to them as Dallas Jesuit.

Dallas Jesuit is such a great group because they come prepared. The chaperones meet with the students multiple times during the school year. This year they also had readings they had to do before the trip. The idea behind the Dallas Jesuit trip to Andahuaylillas isn't direct service (like building homes, painting walls, etc.) or language acquisition (I'm actually surprised at the fact that there's no groups that come purely to improve their Spanish). Instead, the boys come to connect with local people, to learn about a different reality. It's about the students' growth as individuals, as boys becoming men.

Here's an overview of their visit:

Ccapacc Qolla

A key element was missing from my post about the pilgrimage to Señor de Qoyllurritti: video of the dance. Recently, I was able to film the dance that the Qollas when they presented their dance at the feast of Saint Peterand Saint Paul. Obviously I didn't film the whole thing because it can take as long as half and hour, and it's very repetitive, but here it is:

As you can see, the dance has two parts. In the first part, they offer song to the Lord. The verses are all different, and they're all in Quechua, so I don't know what they're saying. They sing a verse, then dance as the band plays a verse. This pattern repeats until the song is done.

Then we move into the second part of the dance. This is the more exciting part, because the men whip each other. With arms around each other shoulders, two men dance forward and back, kneeling down before an image of the Lord three times. Then they separate. One stands in place while the other dances and displays his whip. At a certain moment, he brings his whip down on his partners lower calf/ankle region. Then the roles are reversed. After the second man is whipped, they trade blows until they stop, or another Qolla throws himself between the pair to separate them. After the whipping, the two men embrace. It's worth noting that if one man doesn't whip hard enough, the crowd will yell out “yachachiq!” which is Quechua for “teach him;” the message is for the other man to whip harder.

Whipping is a integral part of Qoyllurritti. The men whip each other to cleanse each other of sin. They embrace at the end because they are made clean by the stinging efforts of their partner.

This video features Pd. Calilo (he is the first to get whipped). Pd. Calilo is a part of the comparsa of the Qollas, and dances with them most years at Qoyllurritti. He has a bad back, which is part of why he doesn't whip as hard as the other men. There's also the fact that he comes from Lima, and not from farm work. You have to give him credit – he takes his beating without flinching. His incorporation into a local expression of faith is one of the things I most respect about Pd. Calilo.  

San Pedro, San Pablo 2016

Wow, ask and you shall receive. The internet speed picked after my last post. To celebrate, here's a post with plenty of visuals.

Part of the beauty of a two year international volunteer program is witnessing the yearly rhythm of a community more than once. The first time it's all new; the second time it has a ring of familiarity. So this year the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, June 29, was something to look forward to.

For those of you who don't remember all the details from last year's post about SanPedro, San Pablo, basically you need to know that Saint Peter is the patron saint of Andahuaylillas, and his feast day is a major holiday.*

The parish decided to switch from dancing saqras (demons) and do a dance called cholo gorilaso. So the costumes weren't so colorful, and there weren't masks. I actually didn't dance with the parish this year because they didn't start practicing until two days before, and I couldn't bail on my students to go learn a dance. But I really enjoyed the day. I was able to take in the day as a spectator. I got lots of video of dances and had more time to play Foosball with students.

Here's a video showing some bits of the festival. 

1. A glimpse of the fireworks display on the plaza the night of the 28th. There's a similar fireworks show for the town's anniversary in December. Could you do this in the US? No. Is it a public saftey hazard? Absolutely. But is it cool? You bet.
2. Mestiza Coyacha. "In the dance Qoyacha young people of both sexes participate. The men represent young Spainards and the women represent mestizas (mixed Spanish and indigenous origins). The Spanish men learn about mestizo customs dancing with the women, then the men invite the women to dance polka. It represents encounter between to cultures.
3. Cholo Qorilazo. This is basically a cowboy dance. The men (the cholos qorilazos), dedicate all their work to care for the women and their horses. Cholo is a multilayered word that in this context means peasant worker (but in Lima is used as a racial slur). Qorilazo means "golden lassoo"
4. Ccapacc Negro. This comparsa is sort of the host of San Pedro, San Pablo. They get the honor of carrying Saint Peter in the procession. Their dance is dedicated to black slaves. It is supposed to address the question "What if the slaves were free?" The black masks are a traditional part of the dance, and I can imagine this dance would play as well in the United States as it does in Peru.
5. Merjeña. These are my students dancing! The 4th year class of FyA 44 always carries St. Ignatius in the procession and dances this dance. It mocks the hacnedados, the plantation owners. Thus the very long noses on the masks. The men stumble around getting drunker and drunk and the women dance with them. Usually the men have bottles of Cusqueña beer in their hands, but the high school students uses sodas instead. The most exciting part of the dance is when they shake the beers up and spray foam all over each other (and sometimes the spectators). The dance often ends with all the men "passing out" on the ground.
6. Tinku. This dance, which originates in Puno, is based on an old tradition that goes by the same name. It's a ritualistic form of combat in which combatants swing at each other but don't actually make contact or cause physical harm. Unfortunately I was only able to film the start of their dance. It's a very high energy and fun dance to watch.

Follow the jump to see more pictures.