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.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
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
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
Thursday, November 19, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Settling into Chachapoyas
Me in the doorway of my school
My schoolWell, I´m into my second week of Chachapoyas, and thus my second week of teaching. It´s alternately thrilling and ardous, the latter because for most of my classes I follow a set curriculum that borders on being completely lame. But I´m thankful for the job and not just for the money (which helps a ton) but also because I get to interact in an intimate way with kids and adults from the community.
I have no desire to be a tourist here, at least in the traditional sense. I don´t want to see Machu Pichu, or fly and see the Nasca lines, or bunk with other gringos for a few days of sight seeing in the jungle. I can´t afford that mode of travel, nor is appealing to me. I am thankful, and grateful, and blessed to have people here who are friends of friends. It is strange for me to watch other gringos in the city, most of who come for a few days for sightseeing. I imagine what it would be like to be in their shoes, the city and people as an unknown and exotic backdrop for the adventurous sightseers. But how lame and superficial and alien it seems at the same time. Yes, here exists the worlds 3rd largest waterfall, and an ancient city of Kuelap, and numerous archeological sights. Yet it seems many -though not all- people come to stare only at water and rocks, to taste foods, see places - not to know the people.
For this my philosophy of travel: I only travel places where I have a personal connection, and where I will spend some time, because am interested in knowing the people of a place first, everything else comes later.
That said, things in Chachapoyas feel remarkably comfortable after 1 week and half. It´s a small city, and after volunteering in a local school and teaching, and hanging out with the 3 peruvians who rent rooms in the house I´m staying in, and their friends, and Enita and her friend Menita, and meeting folks at the discotek, and spending time outside of class with students, I already have many friends and feel a part of the community (though i´m sure i still look like a day'tripper).
And I couldn´t be staying in a better place. Enita, the spunky 6o something year-old women I live with, is a saint. She gave me her room and has helped me in many ways, including food, advice, delicious food, and superb, kind, and funny company. I even have become accustomed to the most obnoxious rooster I have come across (though I must admit this morning when he woke me up I hurled a rock at his waddley noggin.)
I´ve been busy. I now have 5 classes, and am working 6 days a week. Here is a video of one of my favorite classes.
All the buildings here in Chachapoyas are white, with overhangs to protect against the passionate and unpredictable weather. One day it rains, it´s cold. The next day it´s blisteringly hot: I´m in the north of Peru, the next country is Ecuador, the sun doesn´t get much more direct than this latitude, especially as we near the South American summer.
Chachapoyas is at times, literally in the clouds. When the sun shines you can see huge green mountains, steep canyons in the distance.
People dress nice here, and to me, Chachapoyas seems wealthier and more orderly than other places I´ve visited so far. The market is large, in a permanent building with 3 long isles of fruits and vegetables and women mixing spices. It has a second story with tiny little kitchens, shops with cheese and beef jerkey, and fish, and trinkets.
There are four main clubs, discotecs, in town. I´ve been to them all, in one weekend. I´ve discovered I love Cumbia, and have reawakened my love of dancing. My friends here are surprised, because most foreigners who visit don´t like to dance. What I don´t like is the beer. Everybody her drinks budweiser-heinekien type beer I can´t stomach. Unfortunately, drinking copious amounts of this beer is part of the culture of going out. They drink different here in nothern Peru too! They drink kind of like we smoke pot in the states. That is, someone buys 2 beers (a guy) and brings it back to the group (3 to 10 people) along with 1 (1) cup. Everybody drinks from that cup, one at a time, passing the bottle of beer along, dumping out the leftover beer foam in the cup on the floor. When it gets to a woman, the man before her pours her cup, if two women, he waits and pours both of their cups, and then he passes on both the beer and the cup to the next man. It´s been awkward as i´ve learned the rules, but now I think I´ve got it.
There are four main clubs, discotecs, in town. I´ve been to them all, in one weekend. I´ve discovered I love Cumbia, and have reawakened my love of dancing. My friends here are surprised, because most foreigners who visit don´t like to dance. What I don´t like is the beer. Everybody her drinks budweiser-heinekien type beer I can´t stomach. Unfortunately, drinking copious amounts of this beer is part of the culture of going out. They drink different here in nothern Peru too! They drink kind of like we smoke pot in the states. That is, someone buys 2 beers (a guy) and brings it back to the group (3 to 10 people) along with 1 (1) cup. Everybody drinks from that cup, one at a time, passing the bottle of beer along, dumping out the leftover beer foam in the cup on the floor. When it gets to a woman, the man before her pours her cup, if two women, he waits and pours both of their cups, and then he passes on both the beer and the cup to the next man. It´s been awkward as i´ve learned the rules, but now I think I´ve got it.
Now, even though I drank less than everyone else, I am sick and have been so all week. Thus I have time to write, because I can´t speak my throat is so sore.
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