Weddings and Waterfalls.

There are some things I will never take for granted in Chachapoyas. One of those is the market which takes place everyday and is filled with literally hundreds of vendors. It is continually filled day after day with fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, and grains. Shopping is a daily activity here: the only way the food could be fresher is if you picked from a tree, plucked it from a bush, gathered it from the earth, or dug it from the ground yourself. The food system in Chachapoyas is the dream of ecological minded folks in the United States. Almost all the food comes from within 6 hours drive, most of it comes from much closer. The hills are literally covered in fields and gardens of corn, potatoes, wheat etc... and in the most impossible seeming places!! For example, the photo on the bottom where there are no people, no cities, nothing.... there are potato fields on the tops of those mountains. Yeah.

A week ago I took a trip to the third tallest waterfall aptly named Gocta which means something like monkey scream. After an ardous two hour hike through forests with orchids, palm trees, wild birds, pinapple and sugar cane fields, and various hidden hill gardens, we descended to the bottom of the waterfall, to a moss covered cliff face, and a pool of glassy rain water. The waterfall was so tall, in fact, that nearly half of all the water was blown away by the wind before it hit the ground. You could literally stand underneath the waterfall and, looking up, see the waterfall change it´s past in slow motion, drastically swaying from left to right with wind.

I have a friend named Charito who I met because she is living with Enita, the woman who I eat breakfast, lunch and dinner with. Charito is from a small farming village outside of Chachapoyas.

Last thursday she invited me to a wedding of her niece in her village, Lauman. I left early in the morning on thursday and dozed intermittently as we drove for 2 hours on dirt roads, rising and falling through valleys, bumping along, until finally we arrived to the district of Santo Thomas. Her city Lauman is on the side of a hill in a vast valley defined by two giant rock outcroppings. On these two outcroppings existed ancient Chachapoyan buildings built high into the stone.

Revash, high up in that rock believe it or not, are buildings.

In her village I met with her family and friends. Her sister served me breakfast of whole wheat oven baked bread (wheat from nearby fields) and sweet watery coffee. Within minutes I made great friends with a seven year-old girl named Kli (kaylee), who took a great liking to me and my hairy arms. We walked up the muddy road to Charito´s sisters house, picked sweet green peaches from trees, and then stood looking across the valley staring at an unbelievably high church carved into a stone cliff across the valley. For lunch we gathered in the adobe one room kitchen of Charito´s sister. At first her sister was a little embarrased, but Charito assured her that I eat everything. Lunch consisted of boiled free roaming chicken noodle soup, steaming from a cast iron pot cooked over a wooden fire in the corner of the room. On the side where whole fresh dug roasted potatoes, bread, and a plate of corn and beans. It was hearty and delicious, and when really well with the sugary coffee I used to soak my bread in.

Kids were dirty, a testament to the rugged life. Working in the fields there is hard, harder than working in Lima I was told by Kli´s father. HARD. He moved to Lima when he was in his twenties, and when he came back after a few years, he couldn´t handle the workload. ¨here there are no doctors, no... nothing. You work in the campo, that´s it¨ ¨When I came back from the city I hit a wall, I couldn´t it¨

The wedding started at 8pm. Actually it was two weddings. One side of the church was filled with one group and the other was our group. As the father said his thing, children ran around the room and women nursed their babies with casually exposed breasts. The father was very animated, and the ceremony was very religious. I actually agreed with most of the things he said, though I realized that I might have problems in the future if I try and marry a catholic.. haha!

After the ceremony, we filed out to the party into a small decorated room. After champagne, there was a second ceremony (the official legal state marriage... religious and state marriages are separate) and then dancing and beer drinking started. Music blared and everybody in the room danced, we danced and danced, pounding the earth floor with our feet, passing beer, until 4 in the morning, until there was only left a few drunken campesinos, the couple, and myself. My ride back to Chachapoyas arrived at 430 in the morning, I slept the whole way home, and then in my bed soundly into the next day. Happy and content in the knowledge that I shared something special - a world that almost all visitors to Peru do not get to take part in.

Carnavales

For the past couple of weeks I have been recovering from Typhoid and splitting my time between Guadalupe and the desert beach community of La Barranca. I recovered just in time for the biggest Carnaval festival in Peru in Cajamarca, the historic city where the Incan king Atahualpa was captured and killed. Noah (Guadalupe´s only other Gringo guy) and I road up to Cajamarca in the back of a beat up blue toyota pick up. It was an open air ride into the heart of the Andes, wind whipping our faces, standing up and soaking in the beauty as we wound up up up into the clouds. As we got higher we were confronted by water, which came in two forms. One was a torrential downpour as we burroughed into the clouds. The second was children on the side of the road with buckets of water and water balloons. Being two gringos in the back of a pick up during Carnaval is dangerous, because los carnavales are basically one huge waterfight, and who doesn´t want to soak to foreigners in the back of a pickup??

Needless to say we arrived to Cajamarca cold and soaked. That night we met up with another gringa, Dani, from Evergreen and went to the main plaza to take part in the festivities. The plaza de armas in Cajamarca is large and beautiful, and everywhere groups of young and old people stood in circles singing songs, banging drums, with trumpets or guitars, drinking rum and beer and warm chichi. The streets were packed, and people danced in the middle of their circles traditional dances. We danced late, ate soup, and went to bed exhausted from travel and merriment.

The next day we decided to explore. We made it only two blocks from the house before we were mauled by water balloons from a balcony, then seconds later, we were rushed by a group of kids who threw buckets of water on us. In ten minutes the three of us were soaked from head to toe. We quickly realized we needed defenses so we bought the biggest watergun we could find and a couple bags of water balloons. The rest of the day was spent wandering the city and engaging in urban water warfare. It was incredible!! No one was safe. Everyone was a target. Not only that but one had to watch out for paint. Buses, cars, buildings, people.... you could find paint covering them all.

after an epic day of waterfighting .. on my final night I found my self dancing in a group I had met after half a bottle of rum, drinking Chicha and soaking in the music and songs until 4 in the morning. It was beautiful and I left content, content, content.

From here it´s time to recover from a cold, then I got to the beach for a day and after that... Chachapoyas!!

A Christmas in Peru

After a long journey to Chachapoyas, then to the overwhelming city of Chiclayo, I eventually returned to Guadalupe to pass Christmas with the Ramirez family. I arrived at 5:30 on the evening of the 24th, sweaty and red from the Sun and streets of the city. Oh Guadalupe! Small town of wonderful friends. After dumping my stuff in a corner under the stairs, I waited with everyone else until midnight.

In Peru, christmas starts when the clock strikes twelve. In the house of the Ramirezes, the chubby golden hearted eight year old chris was counting the minutes by jumping on couches and giving updates on the passage of time. Slowly the table was set with salads and sides and flowers and panetons, then finally glasses filled with champagen. As twelve struck firecracks popped in the streets and we all gathered around the table. With glasses raised we went around the table with the giving toasts, taking sips of sweet champaign, until every person had given thanks. Then dinner of turkey and deliciousness comenced, with coffee and spiced hot chocolate and wine and other comestibles of various levels of high desirability.

After dinner the tables were moved aside and a dance party commenced. Like all events I have attended everybody danced. Beer was passed around and around and around and around. At 3 30 in the morning a few of us left to the Discotec. We danced for an hour with friends until finally the lights came on and out came two strippers on a stage in front of a pool. The guy was danced as Santa and the woman as.... uh... a present? I´m not a big fan of strippers, to be honest, but it was interesting way to pass christmas, so I shimmied to the side near the front to watch. The dance didn´t last long, and soon a guy with the microphone announced that they needed two volunteers. I was looking around the large group assembled when the female stripper grabbed my arm and pulled me to the front of the pool, facing everyone. Holy crap. My face was already red from a sunburn, but it turned even redder as I contemplated the possibilities of what I was now supposed to do. My first thought was, why did I have to wear my most unflattering, worn through the seems, semi see through underwear? I was quite preoccupied while they found another male and two more female ´volunteers.´The women went first. There was lap dancing and imitation sex. I was turning redder by the second, antipating the worst. Finally the time came and the female strip brought me to the front of the pool, in the bright light, and whispered in my ear just do what I do which was a relief: I didn´t need to get naked or pretend to hump on the ground in front of a crowd of people. Problem was, she was as lithe as a snake. I tried to imitate her dance moves but next to her probably looked like robot. But I shook my arse and wiggled my shoulders and swiveled my hips as best as I could and soon it was all over. I kept thinking, of course, this had to happen to me. It wasn´t even because people thought I was a gringo: I was announced as a Guadalupano. What luck!

Anyhow, the dancing continued well into the light of morning. I left at 8am and on the way home ran into some friends who were returning from the disco as well. I walked them to their street where we ran straight into a street party that was still going strong. A stereo had been dragged out into the street and beers were being circulated with great dedication to the sacred art of drunken celebration. So we joined them. In the corner of the street I noticed a giant paper mache cow.

Early in the evening, before christmas started, there was a competition of paper mache cows. Street communities, and groups of friends, and children all made big paper mache cows and marched through the streets. I watched from my friends Juice bar as they came parading by with tin cans banging and the giant fake cows bouncing crazily past us.

Anyhow, at some point me and a drunk curly haired brother of a friend hoisted the cow over our heads and made it dance cumbia to the pleasure of all. After much dancing I had to take a piss. I entered the house of my friend and when I returned the same curly haired brother and smashed a beer bottle and gotten into a fight with his cousin. Brothers and mothers and uncles and neighbors had wrestled them apart. There was blood on tshirts and broken glass on the ground. As soon as the curly haired brother had been taken away, laughter erupted and the drinking and celebration continued.

Finally at 3pm, i fell asleep. While not the most family friendly christmas I´ve had, it was definitely the most fun and interesting of my life.

friends. Murphy, Rachel, Mohammed



Plaza de Armas, christmas decoration.

The Virgin of Guadalupe

I arrived in Guadalupe on Sunday. Back into the dreamy sweaty cauldron of the magical small city near the Ocean, cut through by the Panamerican highway. I returned for the feria, celebration of the towns Saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe. Over 350 years ago the Spanish brought over a carving of her which rests in the towns Iglesia, and every year two weeks of rituals, drinking, dancing, and singing are performed in her honor. For me, there is a profound timeless and spiritual feeling in the air, the connection to ancestors, the continuity of overlapping layers community throughout generations. I may not believe in Catholicism, but I believe in ritual. The dressing with icons to me is exactly that, a dressing of the more profound connection to those past and to the sacred mystery of life.

Saturday and Sunday are big days, because lots of people gather and carry the statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe up the solitary mountain that rests at the city´s edge. On friday night the streets are filled with people constructing elaborate arches of flowers, stringing decorations, balloons filled with confetti. On Saturday, the virgin is carried slowly, stopping frequently while dances are performed, or for songs of devotion sung by community members on stages, or for prayers. Saturday night everyone climbs the hill and to the sound of a brass band playing northern peruvian coastal music, watches fireworks spin and burn into the desert midnight.

Sunday, today, the statute will return, and the festival will continue for 3 more days of dancing and celebration. Some of the biggest bands in all of Peru are coming to this small city for concerts. At night the plaza de armas is filled with everybody, walking in circles, young people making romantic eyes, small groups of guys drinking rum or beer, mothers and daughters walking arm in arm, older men chatting, kababs of meat sizzling on smoky grills, vendors selling cake and candied figs with cheese & all under palm trees surrounding an elegant dry fountain.

One of the things I love most about Peru is that everybody dances, from the ages of two to eighty years old. Popular dances for all ages include Salsa, Cumbia, and Merengue. In addittion, Peru is home to a variety of beautiful and traditional regional dances, and everywhere I´ve traveled I´ve discovered that people of every region respect and know the dances of the others. But perhaps the most famous, intricate, and difficult dance is the Marinera. It is a courtship dance with ancient Peruvian roots and there are lots of children who learn it at a very young age. On friday there was a contest of Marinera for children. Here are some videos of th 6 and under group:

Love to everyone,

Daniel

images from my life.. of peru.

Left to right, clockwise: Marinera at my friend´s uncle´s 60th birthday party, Leymebamba trip, Mendosa where I will probably be working in March, and Guadalupe at night.

How I became a Stanford Professor overnight.

I was supposed to be at Kuelap, the Machu Picchu of Northern Peru, however plans changed. Now I was headed for Rodriguez de Mendoza, the high jungle eastern edge of the department of Amazonas. On Saturday night, a friend of mine, who I will call X for privacy purposes, invited me to accompany them to a political meeting in the region, and to meet some mayors and possibly secure some work teaching English. Being too good an opportunity to pass up, I promptly returned my ticket to Kuelap and on Sunday morning we set off on a four hour car ride on the bumpiest, most pothole ridden, cliff clinging, stream filled, muddy road I´ve ever experienced. It was beautiful. As we wound down from the high mountains of Chachapoyas, the trees became denser and taller, the air more humid, flowers drooping, palm trees abounded, rivers roared.....finally the road opened to the steamy valley of Mendoza.

On the way we stopped in a small village, Molino Pampas, for some coffee and the converse with the Alcaldera, the mayor of the district. We were greeted by the mayor and sat down for a quick cup of coffee. The rain was relentless, and locals glanced at us (the mayor, the gringo, and X) over steamy bowls soup. In short time, with out me knowing it, X had secured me a room and board in exchange for teaching English to children. I was informed afterwards, and it occured to me that I was in fact in one of the remoter regions of Peru: Amazonas as a department is off the beaten path, and the muddy, bumpy, difficult 4 hour road to Mendoza even more so.

X, I discovered (and for this I refer to them as X) was a former very high ranking governmental official who worked extensively with mayors all across Peru. Now X is traversing amazonas, meeting with mayors, holding meetings, and building a foundation to run for Congress in the 2011 elections. Congressmen and women are very powerful In Peru. The government is divided into the judiciary, the president and his cabinet, and 130 members of congress, that´s it.

We arrived in district or Longran, in Mendoza, and pulled up on the steamy muddy road next to the house of the mayor. He paid our cab fare, and welcomed us into his home for a late lunch of juicy fried dried meat and plantains and yucca. During lunch the mayor and his wife kept looking out the window across the street. I had no idea what was going on. Finally everyone got up, and said come on, and we walked across the street to a building with benches where 50 townspeople were assembled. How interesting I thought to myself I get to watch a political community meeting. There were four chairs and a table at the front of the room. When I went to grab an inconspicuous seat the mayors wife grabbed my arm and pointed to the front of the room ¨up there, that seat is for you.¨

Oh.....

So there I was facing the roomfull of Mendozans, and the mayor began to introduce us. He introduced me last ¨And Daniel Carr, a professor of English from Stanford University¨ What?! I shot an incredolous stare at the back of X´s head. A professor from Stanford?! I regained my composer, though lost it quickly when I realized that I was expected to give a speech in Spanish. Thank god they were passing around a cup and bottle of sugarcane whisky. My speech went over well. Afterwards I was approached, welcomed, invited back, and the mayor offered room and board to teach English.

And that is how I became a Stanford Professor.

........................
I´m amazed. I now have 3 mayors who have invited me to come live in their communities and teach English. All in Amazonas, Peru. Looks like I´ll be returning to the region. But for now, I have week left in Chachapoyas, then I set off for the desert coast once again.

Lots of love,

Daniel

Leymebamba

A break. I´ve been working 6 days a week teaching English since the day I arrived in Chachapoyas. Yesterday the semester at The International Language School ended, thank god. I love my classes, and most of my students, but I´ve needed some time to see Amazonas, the department of the northeast Andes, and the Westernmost edges of the Selva.

It´s starting into the winter rainy season here, though it´s almost summer everywhere else in Peru. In January the sun steams the moisture from Selva, collects water from the Ocean in it´s warm hands, and throws the wet air headlong into the Andies to be wrung out against the mountains in giant billowing gray storms. The clouds block the summer glare, and this plus the altitude provides a chill, thus producing the North Andean winter. But for now, the roads are still passable. Sometimes the downpours are so unrelenting that creeks become rivers, and the roads become rubble.



Today, I left Chachapoyas for the first time since I arrived three and a half weeks ago. I climbed into a combi, a small rundown minivan, filled with people and weighted down with cargo on the roof and set off for Leymebamba. The road wound along a river, cupped by mountains of orange gray rock the flaky texture of halva. On the slopes stood agave-type plants that, summoning all their earlthy strength, had shot up erect stalks 20 feet in trees of striking fertility. Cacti burst out of rocks, and trees and green foliage filled in slopes and the remaining crevices. On the valley floor, next to the road and river, we passed fields of Sugar cane, stone houses, small pueblos with blue and red houses, banana trees, cows tied to plows (including a cow and an elegant white stork nuzzling eachother), lush fields of grass, and trees that had been colonized by hanging plants of magenta and green blades that exploded out of their limbs.



After three hours of travel we arrived in Leymebamba where I was greeted by Menita, friend of Enita (my saint who I live with in Chacha). We prompty set off on a tour of the city... a small pueblo with rock streets, surrounded on by rivers and backed up against a mountain. We wound up the hill behind her house on a narrow rocky road, encountering wandering pigs (big and baby), horses, chickens, and trees,plants, herbs: baby papayas, manzanilla, figs, and many more. From the hill we could see all of Leymebamba, the two converging rivers that circumscribe it´s territory, green hills in all directions and other pueblos in the distance.





As we descended down a set of rock stairs we stopped at a friends house of Menitas. Inside lived two older women, one wearing an intricately woven straw hat and a blue embroidered shirt, who was maybe ninety, but who´s eyes lit with the playfulness of child. We stopped and ate sweet limes on her porch, next to coffee and tobacco plants, and she rattled on laughing and poking fun at me.

After the hill we visiting a cockfight, ate locally produced sweet yogurt dyed pink and yellow and green. Retired to Cena of milk soup (leymebamba is famous for it´s dairy products) and succulent pork.

Love you all, pictures soon.