Odontologos sin fronteras and then a farewell

I'm pretty much at home now in Arequipa and today is my last day here. I am sick so I will be spending it resting instead of frantically taking and re-taking pictures of things I have previously tried (and in the most part, failed) to capture. A month has passed quickly and yet so much has happened. 

Last weekend I was in Coporaque for the second time. It's a beautiful village in the Colca region and the organisation I've been volunteering with, Intiwawa, runs an intercultural project there. Last weekend we were there for something different. Intiwawa were working with odontologos sin fronteras to run a weekend-long free dentistry project in Coporaque and in neighbouring town, Chivay. Unfortunately the name dentistas sin fronteras was already taken so I'm forced to trip over the name all the time, adding in extra 'ogos' and 'ogicas' as the mood takes me. You get the drift.

The lovely dentist, Sophie, with a patient.

It was a really great project and I have only the highest respect for all the dentists who work tirelessly with these projects almost every day for months at a time, lugging a lot of equipment around and living in buses as much as anywhere else. Hundreds of people had teeth hauled, plugged, poked and spruced up. Unfortunately for the populace, there was an awful lot of hauling in mouths that already didn't have many teeth left to haul.

We, as Intiwawa, helped to clean the tools, assisted the dentists and put the patients in order. I took down peoples personal details and put them on the correct list depending on what treatment they needed. Thus, I now know how to recognise and spell the surname Choquehueñca, even when spoken in both thick Peruvian and Quechwan accents. I am picking things up after all!


We stayed the night in Chivay and I was lucky enough to see this sky, this church and a traditional fiesta, full of bright costumes, masks and saya dancing (I think it's called) which my camera failed to do justice. I predict the inadequacy of my camera will be a continuing theme of this blog.

The kids have had school holidays these last two weeks, so we planned activities instead of the usual homework-help in San Isidro. It was great, we played games with the Scouts, taught them (and me) chess, and completed a geography project. While I've been ill, the others also took them to see Los Pitufos (The Smurfs) as a treat for the end of holidays.

This (skipping a lot of stories, skies, barbecues, falling-downs, new arrivals and sad departures) takes me to today. My final one in Arequipa, the beautiful white city with a stunning centro historico which has given the texture to my days, and the friends I've made who added the lights. I will miss the cows wandering past our apartment in the afternoon, the cakes and the ladies from the corner shop, again, the texture of the colonial-era buildings and, of course, the Intiwawa house and family. And that's me trying to avoid listing wondrous things (and favourite kids! - I know, I know) as my parting words.

The city reflected in a church housed almost entirely in glass in Alto Selva Alegre

The house that time split.

Blur or texture?

From our lovely terrace.

On to Cusco!

¡Sube, sube, sube!

Long bus rides from the volunteer house to San Isidro, sunsets to make me quiver, salsatecas to make a fool of myself in while people try to teach me to dance, spinning little Bryan fast, fast, fast in the mornings til we both nearly fall over, taking the kids to the waterfall and falling in el rio a little. Dust, dust, dust. Elva from El Refugio and her glistening open eyes and hearty menus. Hikety-hike-hikes (with the vague idea of preparing for real treks). 


I've been in Arequipa for a few weeks now and I like it. I wanted to share some photos from Chala, a rickety fishing village that I stayed in before, but I have (hopefully temporary) camera problems, preventing me from sharing the eerie image of the foggy coastline and all the romantic thoughts of solitude and strength that it brought to mind, grey photos for a bedazzled imagination.


Anyway, I am happy. Sleeping well, meeting lovely people and learning a lot. And sometimes when I can't sleep, I see funny things and pin them to donkeyhighdeas, but I can't explain them very well and perhaps I ought to learn about grammar:


When the pieces came together they found they could never make just one picture.


One inhaled the hair of another and was at once a bear, a beat, a blink in the midday sun, occupying all the space there ever was and ever could be and fitting all that quite nicely on the underside of a leaf, a fallen leaf that an ant could carry, if not for the exhale which fluttered the leaf from the ground, seeming as it did, such a flutter, to come from nowhere (though we know, within) on a still, still day. Day it seemed, though uncertainly so as the light was everchanging, a period of activity, opposed to the slumberful eve, we may, if we like, call it day.


Another piece, previously possessing hair which could be inhaled, on intuiting the spine of the leaf of the first, gasped at the mighty river therein, feeling, imagining with delight, how wonderful it would be, how glorious, to be a tributary to such a marvellous flow, winding as it did with purpose and poise, so artfully. Being thus transformed by such sensations, this other, also, continued to metamorphosise, at once, sugarcane, a sparrow, a sprite. 


Two such pieces, if such indeed they can be called, spining through and around the pillars of the imagination, star acrobats in a post-physics world, change in response to the heat and fibre of one another. And I adore it. And yet, this is what they always do, had always done, separately, to everything, everyone shall we say, and everywhere before...


- But we didn't know them then and had no need to, the nature of their meeting, their dawning awareness of their coexistence and what we can take the liberty to surmise is their joy at this recognition, this necessitated the bringing of a frame, which they rightly, naturally, happily, refuse to reside within, but decorate most marvellously with their shadows, echoes, dawn tremblings and lustful light, eternal new views to love the eyes of the night.


...Baja, baja, baja!