It’s time. Right now. This morning. To do another blog post. I’m tired of disappointing myself and others by continuing to fail at this blog thing. Also, about a month ago my camera broke so if I don’t start writing things down again I really won’t have anything to remind myself of all my experiences here as a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru!
So, I guess I’ll just start this blog off in the same form I do as all the other ones – disorganized and well, I can’t think of another adjective that means disorganized.
Maybe I’ll start off with a reason why I haven’t been updating this thing. Other than the fact that I’m just bad at keeping up with these things, I’ve been spending most of my free time while not working on music. I’ve been working a lot on my personal singer-songwriter music. I’ve wrote dozens of songs and have been researching and practicing and working on the craft in terms of guitar, voice, lyrics and song form in general…as well as all the other many factors that go along with writing good music. So there’s that in a nutshell, and I’m working on somehow getting this stuff recorded for those interested. I really would love your feedback. I’ve also been playing electric guitar in a musical “orquesta” here in Zaña. Our group is called “Orquesta Etnika.” This type of musical group plays mainly cumbia followed by salsa as well as merengue and in the case of our group some rock as well. The lineup consists (at least) of keyboards, bongos, cowbell, congas, timbales, electric drum kit, trumpet, trombone, sometimes guitars, and at least like 5 singers. I’ve been seriously practicing with the group for a couple months now and we’ve played at two dances. I guess I should say I’ve played at one and a half. The first dance I showed up after midnight and ended up playing for just a couple hours because I was the “special guy” at a quinciñera. That is, I was the one that accompanied this girl, Blanca, who is actually a really nice young lady and helps out a lot in my youth groups, at her 15th birthday celebration, which in Latino culture is like a rite of passage into becoming a woman. So it was an honor to be a part of this celebration but conflicted with playing at the dance with the Orquesta. It all worked out though and was actually good because at that point I really only knew how to play on like 10 songs out of like the 60 in the repertoire. The songs have anywhere from no guitar (like salsa and some cumbia), to a few little parts, to basically nonstop guitar in many cumbias. So a lot of times I just dance around or sing back up vocals if there aren’t any guitar parts in the song. It’s been a pretty sweet experience and is kinda cool to think that I play lead guitar in a cumbia group in Peru…you never know where the heck life will bring you. I’ve also been doing some folkloric music with a young man here in Zaña and we’ve also presented. We play folklore music from the sierra. This is really my favorite type of music from Peru and hope to form the group into more members.
So more importantly I should give you an update about my work here. Although some days can be discouraging and frustrating (not going to lie) the good always outweighs the bad. Especially with the kids. I sometimes lose faith in the adults, that is, the professors, community leaders and other authority figures who many times seem more focused on simply finishing their obligations and planning celebrations and anniversaries. I see more hope in the youth. Especially my group of smaller children every Saturday morning. We now have a space to meet in the part of Zaña called Miraflores. It’s a library and community center. It still has like half a floor, no windows and nothing inside…but it’s nice to have an official space for the group. The Sunday afternoon group of adolescent youth meets there too. But these little Saturday morning kids are pretty adorable, for the most part. I show up and there are like 5 or 10 there. By the time we are a half-hour in there are at least 20 and sometimes up to 25…so as you can imagine it can get pretty crazy. We always have a topic of the day. This can range from anything from children’s rights to self-esteem to taking care of the environment to personal hygiene. We go through the topic playing games and working together. Afterwards we play, which is really these kids’ specialty. I’ve been really happy to have recently found out that they LOVE hangman. I don’t think they had ever played it. But many times they like the crazy running around and potentially hurting each other games. So to find these calm and at least somewhat intellectual games is gold. The also love playing “papa caliente” or hot potato, which is another one I introduced to them. We meet for anywhere between 3 to 4 hours so I’m pretty much always due for a nap Saturday afternoons.
In April I reentered the classrooms to teach in the tutor hours. It’s been somewhat difficult since the students have been using this hour to coordinate all the gifts and things they had to bring for mothers day and now all the coordination for the 50th anniversary of the high school. But soon the tutor hour will free up again. They need a lot of help with orientation and personal development, as well as sexual education. These are things they don’t learn otherwise in high school and their parents usually don’t talk with them about these topics either. I’ve also been continuing with my NATs youth group. They are smart kids but also about the most hyperactive I’ve ever met.
Zaña has been in celebration of their two town patron Saints, Toribio and Isidro. So there have been a slew of events and fireworks at any hour. As a matter of fact, yesterday my alarm was set for 6:30 and about 5 minutes to 6 I think about 25 fireworks went off to start the day for the patron saint Isidro’s celebration. Last night there were firework explosions until about 11:30, which is pretty early so that wasn’t too late.
Lately I’ve been going a little crazy to be honest. I’ve been having trouble finding peace. I know…ironic, right? But it’s been a mixture of many things. It has also been a lack of alone time…even once I get back to my room to sleep at night there are these big mutant crickets and mosquitoes that infiltrate. Luckily the heat has been going away little by little in the evenings and mornings. Yesterday helped a lot with this going-craziness though. My host mom and I did a Ginkana, which is basically a series of competitive games such as bobbing for apples, tug-of-war, sack race, eating contest, egg in the spoon race, popping balloons with your butt…stuff like that. So that’s always fun. Then I just kind of took a personal afternoon and took a couple-hour bike ride through the countryside and then wrote music afterwards. I’ve also been sick last week with a fever, stomach and headache problem that had me in bed for like two days and now have a phlegmy, sore throat, hacking cough thing. On top of that my best Peruvian friend, Relsy’s aunt died a couple days ago. So that was hard for her and being on mother’s day also had me thinking a lot about my mom and sisters and grandmas and family. It was a lot of things at once that made things tough and my patience were running on some things. I think I almost stopped responding to “HEY GRINGO!!” …Other volunteers would understand this one. Speaking of my friend Relsy, the sweetheart always defends me, “His name is Zack, not gringo!” Some of my kids defend me on that one too. Sometimes the little things like that get to you a lot more when there are a bunch of other stressors affecting your life.
But I’m feeling good today, so sorry about that venting session you just had to read through, I should have put a warning to skip that section. I’m still kinda crappy on the phlegmy throat problem so I’m gonna just stick with biking today but do need to get back to the running/training for the half marathon I’m running on the 4th of July in Pacasmayo! It’s a marathon that was created by Peace Corps volunteers some years ago. So to this point I’ve found that training really does wonders in this running thing. And you lose it about as fast as you build it up. A couple months ago I ran 2 hours without stopping. I wasn’t ready…I could barely walk for the next few days afterwards…but it was one of those situations where I kept hitting that “runner’s high” point where you feel like you could run forever. I think the first wave comes after about 30 to 45 minutes (at least for me). So I got to that point and thought, “Okay, I’m gonna run an hour, I’ve done that before.” I got to an hour and was still trucking. “Okay, gonna set a new personal record…how about an hour and a half.” This would have been perfect because upon getting to this point I got that crazy ‘can’t stop my now!’ feeling which pushed me to 2 hours. But the last 15 minutes I was basically limp-running. But being the stubborn idiot I am wouldn’t settle for less than 2 hours. So there’s an overly-detailed story about that. My friend Amanda says we’re going to run 13 miles after this camp we have coming up in a few weeks. So within the next couple days once I kick this cold I gotta get my butt back in gear! That reminds me during the summer we had been biking to the beach on Fridays. It was really nice to just spend a day biking and enjoying the beach. It also ended up being a pretty decent bike ride. Like 25 miles round trip of something. So I’m really lucky to have a lot of things like my guitar, bike, friends, good Peruvian family and friends… still there are times where I get super U.S. nostalgia…it’s always for the people. I could probably live here forever if my friends and family was all here. I miss the hell out of all of you! Anyways, I’m starting to ramble and frankly starting to get tired of writing.
Hmmm, what else, oh my favorite dog recently disappeared. She was my little buddy…Lulu. She must have died because nobody knows where she went. The owners asked me if I knew before I had a chance to ask them. She seemed to have a doggy cold with a bad cough so I think she moved on to a better place where she can live without fear of being accosted by male street dogs and having her tail yanked by little kids.
I guess I haven’t had a blog update since way before I went to Ancash for training and a vacation. Jeez, this could be another three-page blog update in and of itself. Well we had training for a week first, which was mostly pretty good. Then we went hiking and camping in the glacial mount Huascaran. We camped right next to the glacier. It was cold and it even snowed a little bit, which was awesome! We were all pretty cold and wet the whole time because, well, it was cold and rainy. But it was an awesome time. My buddy Chris and I even climbed up into the glacier and we were chilling on the big snow chunks. It was awesome because you could see and hear the glacial chunks falling off from time to time. It sounded like thunder. I probably should mention that directly after talking about how we were climbing up in the glacier, but we were far from the falling parts ;). We also did some naked glacial lake jumps. It was cold to say the least. We also wrote a pretty awesome song…a couple to be exact. Our Peace Corps group is an awesomely creative and musical group of people. We are thinking about pooling a little cash and renting out a studio for an afternoon and recording all of our hits such as, “Kidney Apple Pie, Brice, Double Team, and Animales.” Or maybe we could just record them onto a computer seeing as our budget is minimal. Either way…I’m sure you will someday hear the hits of Big Bean and the Belly Button Band. So that trip was pretty amazing. That’s how we spent our Easter. Ancash is in the sierra part of Peru, hence the colder climate. It’s like a different country from the coast. Peruvians and gringos alike have told me that the jungle of Peru is like a different world. Someday I will see.
Recently I lost my phone so I have this temporary number for now until I get my number back. 949690376. So I think in total for you guys it’s 051949690376. Something like that. If you want to text me I’ll text you back but don’t call unless it’s an emergency because I’m sure it’ll cost you like a buck a minute or something.
So as you can see there has been some back luck lately, but overall the projects have been going well seeing the difference in the children and youth definitely make it all worth it. The music projects and other adventures help too =). Miss you all and hope you are all doing well.
Zack In Peru 