The apocalypse, ‘El Capital Mundial del Pan’, and my first injuries…

First and foremost, if you haven’t heard, last week Cusco and the Sacred Valley experienced some of the worst rain, floods, and mudslides in the last 50 years. No one I’ve talked to can remember the last time it’s rained this much. January 23-27 was the worst by far. It rained all night every night and drizzled most of the day. There have been deaths due to collapsed houses (adobe = earth, rain = water, and water + earth = mud… and mud + mountain = mudslide) and hundreds of tourists were and are stranded around the country. It’s been terrible. Fields of crops are knee deep in water, and potatoes are sinking back into the earth. I think the total estimated damage is around 16 million sols or 5.5 million dollars, but I don’t think you can put a monetary value on watching what little you have being taken suddenly, unexpectedly, and without hope of prevention.

Last Saturday, the 30th, we went to Urubamba with our program to distribute food and clothes, and otherwise help however we could. We handed out about 150 sandwiches, at least 30lbs of pasta, and several 5-kg bags of rice or beans. I’ve never seen so much destruction and desperation so closely before. And I’ve never seen people so grateful for a piece of bread with cheese. The people we fed were toiling in acres dotted with heaps of mud littered with tin and thatch – the remnants of their houses – salvaging what wood, scrap metal, and tools they could, so they could begin to rebuild their lives. We hiked through the disaster zones to reach them, and even though we had little to give, it was amazing to see how grateful they were. Once we were out of food, we gave the only things we had left: time and physical capacity.

We joined them in extracting wooden poles and planks from their mud-heaps. This is not an exaggeration by the way. What were houses a week ago are now very literally mountains of mud with glass, wood, metal shards, and the occasional teapot. And when I say mud, I don’t mean that nice mud and grass mix after a light drizzle. I mean the mud that looks like real land but will eat your leg if you step in it (not that I’m speaking from experience or anything) and that lurks in one particular spot under ankle-deep water. The mud that cakes your boots and makes you feel like you’ve got lead weights strapped to your legs or that sucks you in so deep you can’t budge. We made piles and sorted the planks, poles, and tin (remnants of roofs) of various families, and tried to save clothing and tools if we found them. We helped….

We helped a handful of families, but the destruction is all over the valley and thousands are affected.

And there is still water everywhere. Even after a week of beautiful weather, roads are still flooded, railways are still out, and getting help to the people who need it is almost impossible.

We helped, but houses are still gone. Crops are still lost.

And food prices are still rising.

In India, they rose because of late monsoons and a terrible drought. Here, they rise because of a deluge. History, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. 

But it’s so easy for us to turn our backs and forget about what’s behind us. We left in the evening, and went back to our homes in Cusco where we have food and potable water. Where we had a roof over our heads and a warm bed for the night. We can shake the memories from our minds and move on with our lives… but the people are still there. They are there digging through the filth as I sit here writing. On my laptop. While watching some dubbed Disney show in Spanish with Lauren and Guillermo. With dinner on the way… 

If you believe in any deity, the Force, or some other cosmic power-that-be something, pray to it, channel it, do whatever you do from wherever you are. If you think it’s a waste of time, use Pascal’s Wager – if it doesn’t do squat you lose a few minutes of your life, but if it does, then you’ve done something great… and if you can find a way to donate, do it. Seriously.

If you want more information about what’s been going on, check out the BBC. I’ve only been watching the local news channels here, and haven’t gotten a chance to see the international news other than what I’ve been able to gather from family and friends’ concerned messages, but I’m sure the BBC is covering the events here better than any American news station. The problems go so much deeper than tourists being trapped at Machu Picchu, though there have been deaths due to avalanches, mudslides, landslides, houses collapsing, roads being underwater, etc.

But, in spite of all the destruction, the chaos, the paucity of resources, there were, as there always are, glimmers of humanity that are all but invisible unless you look for them. When I gave one man a sandwich, he thanked me and said that was his first food in the last two days he’d been working, but he still gave the cheese between the bread slices to a whimpering dog. Children still shared blankets and clothing when we handed them out, and people still tried to feed us. I had a great conversation with Carlos (26 year old Peruvian studying tourism, a good friend of one of our program staffers, who came along to help) in the bus on the way back about how for some reason people from smaller towns generally seem more real more human than people from larger cities… and about how a gift from someone who has nothing means so much more than a gift from someone with the world in the palm of their hand.

Speaking of being able to turn our backs and minds to other issues, lets backtrack to the week before… Saturday, January 23, 2010.

Part of our program is volunteering one day a week to build cleaner burning stoves for a couple hours a week. We all pile into a van, get driven out into the middle of nowhere about 45 minutes- 1 hour outside of Cusco, and spend the afternoon elbow-deep in mud trying to construct stoves with actual chimneys so the smoke, soot, and other junk can escape through the roof rather than hanging out in the kitchen causing cancer. Last week (the 23rd) we built our first set. The house was adobe, and the kitchen/storage area had a different building from the rest of the living quarters. They had running water, but not in-house plumbing, which I thought was interesting, and for some reason every place from markets to this tiny pueblo on some random mountain in the Andes has a sound system! It was also funny to see an outhouse for the first time in several months. Unlike the Indian ones, which are just holes in the ground, this was a hole in the ground with seat…

Anyway, it was kind of awkward at first, since we had no idea what we were doing at first, but we had to look like we knew exactly… but on the plus side, this 7 year old girl was helping us and she was awesome. Regardless of how much I think about it and how many times I experience it, I’m always impressed by how intelligent people who have absolutely nothing can be. Quechua (aside: why do English speakers feel the need to add an –n to every language!?! It’s not QuechuaN it’s QUECHUA! Yes, this is the linguist in me coming out…. Anyway…) is her only native language, but she’s been learning Spanish from her brothers, who study it in school, and could understand a bit of English also. She reminded me of Rohan, one of the homeless children I talked to in the market in Friend’s Colony, New Delhi, who knew English and Hindi, and knew basic math without formal schooling and by the age of 4. That was a cool experience, and volunteering was one of the reasons that I chose this program in particular.

The next day, we visited Oropesa (literally ‘gold weights’) which, as our host father reminded us several dozen times, is ‘el capital mundial del pan’. Seriously. ‘Donde estamos yendo?’ ‘El Capital Mundial del Pan’. It got to the point where he could ask me in Quechua and Aymara and I could give that response without understanding the question, and be right, lol. When we got there though, there were two flooded bridges, and it was impossible to cross part of the road because it was underwater. Also, keep in mind that it rained all of the night before and that houses there are generally made out of adobe… and adobe is basically dirt… and dirt + water = mud, and not only is mud not solid and therefore not suitable to support the weight of a house, but also mud + mountain = mudslide… we saw several collapsed houses, though it wasn’t as bad as Urubamba. Eventually, we were able to convince an adventurous mototaxi driver (basically a motorcycle with a back-car/shell around it? Like a motorized rickshaw with a cover… it was pretty sketch, even sketchier than the autos in Delhi) to cross the flood. I have an entertaining video clip of it, but we’ll see if I ever actually get around to posting it.

Anyway, in Oropesa proper, literally every house has an oven. And I don’t mean the dinky electric things we have in the US, I mean a wood-burning 5 foot tall, 10 foot wide, giant paddle-worthy horno (oven in Spanish = horno) You can find every kind of bread from rolls to pita-like flatbreads to olive and cheese empanadas, and they are all ridiculously cheap by American standards and absolutely amazing.

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About the floods though, when we came back to the flooded road 3-4 hours later, the water level had barely subsided even though the rain had stopped hours before. Apparently garbage has a way of blocking any escape path that the water has…. They probably had similar problems in Urubamba and in other parts of the Sacred Valley.

It rained all of Sunday night again… and all of Monday… and most of Tuesday… Thursday was the first even remotely clear day in weeks. Cusco hasn’t seen weather this terrible in around 50 years. We didn’t have water from Saturday morning until Wednesday morning because one of the main water pipes in Cusco burst due to the pressure, and there have been deaths in Machu Picchu and the surrounding areas. This past weekend (the 29th-31st) we went to Urubamba to help distribute food, clothing, and water to the people who have lost their homes. What’s worse, they just rebuilt everything from the earthquake in 2007… Can you imagine?

During all that insanity, our host-brother was on his way home from Lima to Cusco via bus. Go figure. A road was underwater around 180km (around 80 miles I guess) from Cusco, so the bus had to stop. Since he’s male, he decided to start walking…. Even though he knew his father was on his way to get him. Willy, our host father, took off in his car even though he knew roads were terrible and the Peruvian transportation was literally and figuratively in pieces. How fatherly. So Willy got to a different point where the road was under water, walked around it, borrowed a motorcycle from someone (the details got fuzzy here) and got to Limatambo, before continuing in a bus to the upper city where Guillermo was supposed to be. They crossed paths… again, go figure. Apparently Guillermo spent that night up in the mountains in the rain somewhere, and finished the 30km trek to Limatambo the next day, while Willy finally found a way back also…. Marilyn, our host-mother, was of course scared witless, especially since all the news showed for 4 days were floods, landslides, and a general apocalypse. To top it all off, apparently they were watching 2012 on the bus….

Fortunately, everyone’s home now J Plus, the water came back on the day they got back!

Changing the subject, once again WE HAD FRIGGIN 8 HOURS OF CLASS ON MY BIRTHDAY!! Man, if I had been in India it would have been a national holiday and we could have had fireworks and stuff. Oh well, thanks for the birthday wishes everyone! It was definitely memorable. Lauren, my roommate here, and a few other girls took me out after class, bought me a piece of cake, and sang happy birthday (complete with candles) in the middle of a restaurant. Later that evening, one of our program staffers surprised me with another cake too, so lots of sugar :-D

Hmm… what else has happened…. Oh, it’s been fun to hang out with Guillermo. He’s 19 and is studying Political Science and ‘Derecho’ (human rights) in the University near by. We’ve just been talking and he’s been walking us around the city, a chill but fun way to spend a day, especially now that the weather’s awesome again. He’s patient with our Spanish, which is greatly appreciated, and it seems like English is commonly taught as a foreign language here in Peru. He finds it easier to understand than to speak, which kind of works out since then we can ask him the Spanish terms for English words if we need to. Plus, then we can practice our Spanish more.

It’s also good to know the local slang. Apparently ‘Guita’ is slang for ‘dinero’ or ‘money’! It gives the saying ‘you’re so money’ a totally different meaning for me J Lol, maybe someday it’ll be literal in spite of my majors. It’s also incredibly ironic since my name, ‘Geeta’ is from the Bhagavad Geeta – the Hindu holy book.

Ah, and first injury. This takes some backstory, but like most of my injuries, can be summarized by me being an idiot. I would also like to say, before I begin, and I am totally fine, I walked away from my stupidity, and that there wasn’t too much blood.

So Thursday we spent the morning walking around the city with our culture professor, looking through a museum or two, and learning more about the structure and logistics of planning Cusco. Since we didn’t have class from noon-5, I decided that it would be a good idea to wander around the city on my own and basically do what I did last week – just talk to people and get to know my way around better, the short cuts, etc. After about two hours, I realized that I’d successfully gotten lost… crap… but I knew that I was too high up, and needed to descend a couple of streets to get closer to the CBC where my classes are. (Cusco is pretty much between mountains, so when I say descend, I mean literally, downhill)

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Anyway, so as I was trying to find a way down, I passed a street going downhill with a bunch of kids playing in it. I figured I could just go around them and continue heading down hill…. But apparently they had an overly protective dog so that was a bad idea… I didn’t actually get bitten thank goodness, since I had enough presence of mind to put my backpack between me and the dog… but I sort of ran into a parked car while I was trying to get away from it… yeah… the result is a cut about 3 inches long and a hand-sized blue spot on my leg… it would have been a better story if I’d like gotten attacked and then kicked the crazy mutt in the face or something, but it’s me, and I can’t possibly get injured in ways that are even remotely interesting… At any rate, the owner of the dog came out and apologized to me, and explained it was because generally random foreigners don’t pass through residential areas. Obviously my intrusion wasn’t intentional, but I guess it’s good that they have a protective dog? Meh, they assured me that it was a pet and did not have rabies… but I learned my lesson. They helped me wash out the scrape, though they didn’t have any bandages, and of course I took my first aid kit out of my backpack that morning (again, go figure) so they pointed the way to the CBC where someone gave me a some whiskey and a bit of cotton to wash it out with. Lol, I had some trouble believing that they wouldn’t have basic first aid at a research center, but I guess I had just enough time back from India to readjust to American standards of safety and sanitation. Plus whiskey serves more than one purpose.

Speaking of the self-medicating ‘you’ll be fine’ attitude, Willy gave Guillermo and I a speech about how Coca Cola is the best cure ever for an upset stomach, and if doctors just prescribed coke then all the body’s problems would be solved etc. It actually reminded me of windex in My Big Fat Greek Wedding… but I agree. Coke tastes way better here than it does in the US, though I haven’t the slightest idea why. I don’t like bubbles, so maybe it gets flat faster because of the altitude?

Oh! It’s amazing how much people here like Bollywood music and cinema! Plus, they played Daler Mehndi at a discotec!! I don’t remember which song… but I was getting weird looks for dancing bhangra in the middle of a Peruvian nightclub. Especially since it was full of Peruvians and Europeans. It still made my night though J Abhishek, you would have been proud.

Coming soon:

CEVICHE!! (Carlos promised to take me to a good cevicheria for lunch one afternoon this week, and I’m super excited. Ceviche is the best stuff ever and I’ve been craving it since I got here. I’m kind of intimidated since it’s basically marinated seafood with raw vegetables and could probably kill me, but the roadside stands in India are way sketchier and I survived those right?)

KARAOKE!! (Luis, Guillermo’s bffle, was making fun of me most of Saturday night since we went to a non-touristy bar and I kept trying to sing along to songs I didn’t know… hey, I wanted to sing, and it’s not my fault the music wasn’t cooperating. Anyway, he promised to take me to a place where I can sing to songs I know. Apparently the best discotec in town is pretty close to one of the best karaoke places in town. That will be an awesome night)

And of course the unforeseeable adventures that ‘just kind of happen’

Man, I need to cash another traveler’s check, actually put money on the phones they gave us (oh yeah, mom and dad, I have a cell phone here… I can give you the number and you can call me through skype I guess? Apparently the $4 headset I got here is more than ½ dead…) and get some sleep for a change. I slept in until 8:30 today, can you believe it!? It’s craziness.

Congrats on making it to the end! Hope you enjoyed the latest edition of update of my adventures even if they’re not that adventurous. Hope all’s well in the US, Englaterra, India, or wherever in the world you are.

-Geeta