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!

El Carmen gives me the heartbeat to start

El Carmen kissed and seeped into my skin, thanks in no small part to the friendship and kindness proferred by one Mario Vargas Meinel. The cotton-picking town is so warm and friendly, and Mario made its history sing to me.

It's 300 km south of Lima, the home of Afro-Peruvian culture, and I went there in search of music, made famous by the Ballumbrosio family and an essential learning curve for anyone hungry for history and heart through rhythms. Not many people go there though. Alas, the fiestas for the Virgin del Carmen take place this weekend, when I've to be in Arequipa. They have such hopes for the pueblo - by (eventually) building a cultural centre based around the late Amador Ballumbrosio, they hope to build on the potential of the place to attract musicians and artists. I can see how wonderful this could be.

A photo by Lorry Salcedo Mitrani from an inspiring photography book for children, comparing African culture in communities in Peru and Brazil. Amador plays the violin. 20 years ago or so.

After talking to me throughout the best part of the night, telling me so many histories of the place, his rich and varied life seeing the world, and the characters he's befriended who fell for various parts of Peru and became part of them, Mario and I met again in the morning and walked out to a ruined hacienda, la casa de san regis. He wanted to check his drawings to the real thing.

 

A lady once sat on the terrace, entertaining her friends from la casa de san jose with iced tea, finery, civility and laughter that could chill your bones. Horses were freed from their carriages awhile and awaited being put to service again. Surrounding them in the fields, spines bent irreperably to make such straight columns. We listen, and hear our hearts too.

Mario with a head from the nearby church that was destroyed in an earthquake but still functions.

Lena, the mama from the hospedaje I found, was a delight too. No running water but she let me use their kitchen. Everyone I spoke to was so open and welcoming, pious and partying souls.

Hasta la proxima vez, El Carmen

robadores, jungle hipsters and assorted confusions

First steps after stumbles; missed flights and London Pride nights. Lima looms but a bed beckons first, a few hours in and I have the traveller smell already. The feeling of a right choice makes twists around the edges of the mind as I try to think and not think together. 

I'm without a first photo but I've painted a couple already. Pretty shocked to discover I'm actually writing here, probably best to start while I'm tired and not thinking too much about it. A welcome change from the notebook, brings out different thoughts. So much traffic this morning and the -gloom- . I was warned of this. The grey, waiting to be born pains of Lima for half of the year, colourless skies sap what from the city? I will see. 

And jungle hipsters? Well that's a stretch... Odd hippie New Yorkers who dress like third world dandies and voyage into the Amazon to play guitar to the locals and sip their ancient histories that he seems so desperate for. With feathers in his hat and coral round his neck and a serious, very serious, love for living. My newspaper went unread. 

¡Venga, venga, vamos!