Jul 2007

Friday night was my last night in Ayacucho. It broke my heart to leave everyone so I drowned my sorrows in wine and spent my last night at the arcade I'd been dying to go to for 3 weeks with Emmy and a few of the guys. Had I known that my flight from Ayacucho to Lima would be on the tiniest plane ever the next morning at 7am, I may have a drank a bit less. My first day in Lima was a good one. Emmy, Angela, and Jackie were all here for a 16 hour layover so we went to Miraflores, walked, got the most amaizng massages ever, and ate disgusting amounts of food. It still felt all day like this was just a little weekend trip and we´d still all be going back to Ayacucho together in a day or two.... definitly did not feel real at all until they left for their flight last night. So as sad as it makes me to come to the realization that I will no longer be seeing Emmy, Pooja, and Emily everyday.... I have mentally prepared myself to come home and tell stories about Peru until everyone is really really sick of hearing about it.
Yesterday was my first time in a very long time (maybe ever) spending the whole day and night alone. Lima is huge, and it amazes my how anonymous giant cities like this can be... I easily did not have to really talk to anyone (besides asking how much something costs and ordering food) all day.
As if I could possibly shop anymore than I have, I managed to somehow... but not nearly as much as I did in Ayacucho because now everything here seems expensive to me. This morning I checked out of the hostel and went to a spa. I figured that in the states I would never be able to go a nice spa for this cheap. I got an hour long amazing fullbody massage, bikini wax, manicure, and pedicure all for 210 soles... thats only $70.
I was thinking recently that I learned alot more spanish then I thought I had in Ayacucho. I seem to be getting around fine, and I think maybe people in Lima are just easier to understand... they don't mix quechua with spanish and they speak alot slower. Anyway, when I was getting my dirty dirty completely black on the bottom feet pedicured, I felt the need to apologize and somehow explain why a nice girl like me had feet like that.
I wanted to say, My feet are very dirty, I am sorry. But I couldnt remember the word for dirty. Without even thinking... I have no idea why I said it... I mean I dont even use the word often... I said, "Lo siento, mucho caca a mi pies"
I probably would have thought I had said the correct thing, but the womans face looked so astounded I quickly repeated to myself what I had said... "I´m sorry, there is alot of poop on my feet".
I tried to explain that i just didn´t know the word... I´m still not sure if she got that.
I cant believe I said it.

Anyway, I fly home overnight tonight and I am both excited to see everyone I´ve missed, but so so sad to leave the people here and the little city in the mountains that I completely fell in love with.

To all the CCSers--
I´ll miss you guys so much. Though I´ll never forget our experience as a whole and all I learned from it, I hope more than that I´ll remember all the random hysterical shit that happened to us, all the times we laughed till it hurt, the nights we danced till we couldn´t breath, and all the walking and walking and hiking and walking....

so as if all the hiking we did on the llama trek wasnt enough... my first day back at work Pooja and I were sent out with two other nurses on what I like to call adventure nursing. Basically, we are given a big cooler of yellow fever vacinnes and sent out into the outskirts of ayacucho to vacinate anyone who needs them. I had no idea that walking to the outskirts of Ayacucho would basically mean hiking straight up on the worst terrain possible for 2 hours. The nurses here have a completely different job then back home. Poor Pooj was wearing black dress shoes. You´d think I´d be used to hiking into higher altitudes after the weekend, but no... I could barely breathe and was sweating like a beast. We´d crawl upwards and diagonal from worn tin door to worn tin door, knocking and offering free vacinations. We got to vacinate everyone, from 2 year olds to decrepit old ladies. I feel like all I saw that day were syringes, dogs, dirt, and boogery children. But, it was all worth it for 2 reasons. The first is, Pooj and I were the ones giving the vaccinnes! Its so fun sticking people with needles, thank god I get to do this for the rest of my life. The second reason it was worth is was that we ended up at the top of this mountain, looking down on the whole city of Ayacucho, at these holy caves where people go to worship and light candles. They were beautiful caverns with overly dramatic crucifixians and paintings of Jesus everywhere.... for some reason one statue of Jesus had a cowboy hat on though... I´ll have pictures of that eventually.
But work only got more interesting today...
We arrived at our clinic at the usual time of 8am to find all the nurses and doctors outside talking in a group. They were all going to march and protest for who knows what because there are basically riots and protests and strikes here constantly. So as we waited outside the empty clinic for our driver to come back and get us, I found a really tiny puppy. As we sat there playing with it a woman comes up to me and starts talking really fast. See, everyone here thinks we´re American doctors because of our white lab coats, so its very common for sick people to run up and tell us their problems. Anyway, this woman starts showing me a dry rash around her mouth and I´m like ¨si... si.... si...¨and then all of the sudden she pulls out her giant boob and sticks her humungous nipple in my face!!! She´s trying to point out some rash or irritation on the nipple but like I just cant get over how monstrous it is... Pooja starts cracking and has to walk away, I´m just like completely dumbfounded because we´re out on the street in public and this is going on. So my answer to her problems was not helpful.... ¨no estoy un medico¨ and I tried to push her towards the clinic. I didn´t wanna stare at her nipple anymore.
After that wonderful first hour of today, we were sent off to this giant health campaign. What I have kind of figured out thats going on is that the health insurance here is holding this huge campaign for everyone possible to come get help in like any department of healthcare. So when we got there it was something like 600 people in a horribly unorganized crowd trying to get the help they desperatly need. We were put into triage and tried really hard to get everyone´s histories together and send people off to the different departments. It was extremely chaotic and frustrating and even sad because these people NEED to see a doctor but so many of them don´t have medical histories, etc. No one knew what they were doing and where to go and the hardest part was the very second any of us volunteers step out of the triage tent, we´d get swarmed by people asking a million questions that we don´t know how or just can´t answer. This campaign will still be going on tomorow, even if another paro occurs, and they really need help so I have to head back there this evening at 5 and then again all day tomorow. Then Thursday we´re following the campaign to another part of Ayacucho for one final day of chaos. Should be exciting...
As much as I love all that I´m doing here and all that I´m learning, I´m pretty eager to go to Lima on Saturday and relax for a few days before I come home.
I´m gunna miss everyone here so much though.

I´m sorry if I sound cliche, but the llama trek was the most amazing experience of my life. We hiked up to 14,500ft in the Andes Mountains, llamas along side us the whole way. It was definitly the hardest thing I´ve ever done physically, but the feeling of accomplishment is priceless. I´ve never been to or even seen anything more gorgeous in my life. We made it up to our summit in one day, but we stopped every like 150ft because the air is so thin and you really can´t breath. I breathed as though I had just ran 3 miles as fast as i could, for 24 hours straight. Your feet feel like they weigh 20 pounds, and parts of your body start to tingle and then go numb. Because its the dry season here, we were told we would see no snow, only snowcapped mountains. But when we got to the summit, Pancho points out that he sees rain coming. Within 10 minutes a full on blizzard started. Because of how unsafe it would be for us to get stuck up there in the snow, we literally ran down the other side of the mountain. We went from 14,500ft to 13,000ft in 45 minutes. That made almost everyone extremely sick. But I, beleive it or not, did not get sick at all. That night we stayed in a schoolhouse in a tiny little thatched roof village. The 9 of us all slept on top of eachother breathing really heavy and trying to stay warm. Some people got up to puke, alot of people barely slept because they felt horrible or were too cold.... I slept 8 hours and felt amazing the next day. I still cant beleive that I was physically able to handle this and I am extremely proud of myself. I think my heart and lungs are probably the strongest theyve ever been.
The next morning no one except me was eating alot, and I mean, I ate alot alot... pancho tells me YOU EAT GOOD. I said, gracias pancho... me gusta comida.
On the way home from the trek we stopped at hot springs and they were amazing. I´m tired of writing now. All in all, we hiked in the Andes, we rock.

I spoke before about la huelga, the longterm strike thats going on here. I learned of a new kind of strike last week, el Paro. The Paro is when no cars are allowed to drive, no businesses are supposed to be open, and no gringos are supposed to be out... for 2 days straight. We were told by our director that in the past the paros have gotten very violent (cars flipped over and lit on fire, peasants marching through the plaza with sticks, etc). So we decided to get well prepared monday night with mucho comida, cervezas, y vino. Fortunatly, it turned out to be a very mild paro and even though we couldnt go to work and no cars were on the road, we were able to leave the house for a little bit. I mostly just lied on the roof drinking vino and watching the marches from a safe distance. Pooja and I made a US Flag cake. We worked on some craft projects for the clinic... all in all it was a nice day. Wednesday, the 4th, our favorite man ever Pancho threw all of the volunteers a party. Peruvians love to celebrate everything here, so when he heard we had a big gringo holiday we were missing... he went all out. This man practically owns Ayacucho so he can do whatever he wants, paro or not, and he somehow managed in 2 days to get together a feast, large amounts of alcohol, 2 bands, a bonfire, and our own fireworks show.... all in his exwife´s house... he is the man. It ended up being one of the best 4th of July partys I´ve ever been to. I love pancho.