Reflections from the Family v 2.0

At the end of May my fellow YAVs and I (with the exception of Sara Alta, sad!) finally made our way toCuzco and hiked the 4 days of the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. It was undoubtedly the hardest physical challenge I have ever faced. But the exciting thing is that my Mom, Dad, and brother Jim (Jack sadly couldn´t come) came to hike with me! They came a few days early to see my life in Peru and my work with the IEP Collique and the Fair Trade Program Bridge of Hope at the Red Uniendo Manos.

So this time, instead of me telling you about vacation (I´m getting tired of my own voice at this point!), I´ve asked each of my family members to reflect on their time in Peru. Below you´ll find reflections from each of them on their time in Lima and hiking the Inca Trail. Each is a little different and offers a wonderful, fresh perspective on my life and work here in Peru.

I must give my warning -- THIS IS A LONG POST! But I really do encourage you to read each reflection because each is different and examines a different facet of the Peruvian experience. Plus, I saved my brother Jim´s for last, and he´s a really good writer (so are my parents, not trying to choose favorites!) :) Enjoy!

Sandy Irby (aka Mom)

Dear Ginna,

I think because our trip to Peru was such a 'first' for me...my first foray into a third-world country...that I still am processing it all and am having a hard time speaking coherently about it all...I tend to ramble...too many thoughts (and, often not very well-formulated ones!!) pushing to the surface at the same time...so, in answer to your request for Peruvian thoughts for your blog, I think I'll do best to do bullet-points...right now, it's the only way I can think about it all. What I'd really like to do is just put a big DITTO on Jim's thoughtful and wonderfully eloquent epistle (below) he sent you before he left for Morocco!! So, besides what I say below, also 'what he said' !!

**My favorite day in Peru: the first one...when we got to meet your 'family' and see how accepted and loved you are by them...when you took us on a typical 'day in your life'--all those wild bus rides !!--getting to see Collique...and all the adorable children you work with...It was so heart-warming and heart-breaking all at the same time...It was amazing to see how much those kids love you, and how much you love them...to see how needy they are, in so many ways, and yet how happy they are in just as many ways...The visit to Angie's house, and then the trek up the mountain amidst the hovels that serve as houses, is one that I will never forget...Angie's mother's elegance and genuine hospitality (even if it was that danged 'Inca Cola'!!) in the midst of poverty touched me on a level deeper than I can express...All around, where I would have expected to see despair, I was touched by unimaginable vitality and celebration of life...truly inspirational!!

Me with a group of Collique kids

**My second favorite day: the second one...going to the 'office'...meeting your co-workers at the fair trade organization...getting a fuller appreciation of what your work there entails and what it means for the Peruvian artisans...I can see why you find that work so fulfilling...How wonderful to be a part of helping the local artisans use their artistic skills and talents in a fair, productive, and hopefully self-sustaining way...an opportunity that we take for granted in the western world!!

**The hardest four days of my life (even beyond childbirth (!!)...and yet, like childbirth, yielding memories that become less painful and more miraculous with each passing day!!): Hiking the Inca Trail!! Having always strived toward physical fitness, I have never been one who enjoys pushing the limit...and the Inca Trail did indeed push me beyond my limits!! It wasn't just the hike itself, but that combined with the whole camping adventure (for me, that means little, if any sleep...which, sadly, is something that I tend to need a lot of!!)...I hate to be such a sissy, but at the same time, I have never been shy about admitting that camping to me is staying in a hotel that doesn't put chocolate on my pillow!! So, yes, this was quite a stretch for me!! All that said, now I must admit what a sense of accomplishment and exhilaration there was in finally making it through and seeing 'Pikachu' (what my mom called Machu Picchu before coming here) in the mist before us!! Would I have ever done this if you hadn't wanted us to do it? No. Am I glad that I did it? You bet!! It really is wonderful to get to a point in life with your children where the tables turn and They are teaching YOU valuable lessons about life...I thank you for that!!

"Pikachu"

**The best part about the trip: SEEING YOU!! We have missed you so much!! It was sheer joy to be able to see you looking so happy, so comfortable, and so at-home in Lima...I can see that you have developed a sense of solidarity with the people and the area...It was heart-warming to see you so proud and so excited about showing us all the aspects of your life there...it was amazing to see you so adept at the language, at the bus system, and all the other cultural nuances of life 'on the streets' there...I pity the first taxi driver that you encounter once you get back to the States...he won't stand a chance if he expects you to pay anything over 8 soles!!

**The next best part of the trip: Getting to meet all your new friends...both the Peruvian ones and the YAV's...what amazing people they are!! I can why you are so attached to them!! The world is indeed a better place with Anna, 'Putapon', Baja, Alta, Joe, Debbie and Harry, and of course YOU in it!! You all are true inspirations to us all!! And, besides that, you are all just plain fun!! I do so hope that you all continue to maintain your friendships with one another once you return to whatever lives are in store for you after Peru...I have not doubt that you will...those ties are too strong not to last!!

View from my new home in Mirones Bajo

**The BEST-EST part of the trip: Seeing how strong and independent a young woman you have become!! You handled the immensely difficult and oftentimes tedious job of being tour guide and translator for us...all the while trying to enjoy time with your fellow YAV's on what was supposed to be a vacation for you all...what a difficult juggling job that must have been!! And you handled it with such grace and poise...and, we thank you for that!! All through the trip, I reveled in seeing your strong sense of moral integrity, your keen intellect, your fabulous sense of humor, and your genuine love for people shine through...from the highest mountains in the far reaches of the Inca Trail to the boardwalk in the heart of Lima to your home here in Richmond, you are a bright light in the lives of all you meet...and, it is an honor and a privilege to be your mother and to watch as you continue to grow into your potential and begin to share your amazing gifts with the world!!

Jim “The Older One” Irby (aka Dad)

Progress! Reflecting back on my two weeks in Peru, my mind keeps coming back to "progress" and how we define it. Living all but about 4 weeks of my 50+ years in a "developed county", I had formulated my definition of Progress by means of a very narrowly focused lens. Order, convenience, efficiency, manipulating the wild, advanced learning all would all be terms that I might use to define progress as I have typically understood it. And when I think of developing countries (or third world countries), my mind typically anticipates that these places "Lack Progress" or "fall behind in progress". It is easy to allow this frame of mind to set in when I keep an arm's length from setting foot in "the Third World."

Two weeks ago, I entered the Third World, (thanks to my daughter who is dedicating a year of her life to live among the Peruvians as a Peruvian) and I had the brief opportunity to experience life and progress through the Peruvian lens. It all became very obvious to me that Progress as we see it in the West cannot be applied or transplanted to developing countries. Progress has been ongoing for just as long inPeru as in the West, if not longer.

One of the paved streets in Collique

Our time exploring the ancient Incan culture along the Incan trail and visiting some of the ruins, quickly showed me that these people had a better grasp of living with the land and it's resources than most cultures that have followed. Ingenuity, working with nature's forms, sculpting the land to preserve it and not to rob it of it resources were very apparent. An ordered and systematic form of community, communications, and supporting one another as a peaceful nation was the way of life for the Incan people. Progress Incan style was productive, calm and beautiful.

Then Incan Progress met Spanish Progress and the latter forced its way on the former in the name of progress. The result was a lost Civilization and a Culture that was dismantled and rebuilt to the Spanish idea of progress. One has to wonder what the Incan empire would look like today if it was left alone to progress in the direction of it own choosing. This idea fascinates me.

Fast forward 500 years, and this land goes through several cycles of outsiders pushing their will and their idea of progress on the people of Peru. The result has its tragedies, its inequalities, and a few surprising victories. In spite of it all, its people are very strong, proud, accepting and gracious. I always felt honored to be in the presence of every Peruvian I met. The city, though very different from the urban fabric that I am accustom to, had its order, efficiencies and ingenuity disguised in well worn structures and brightly painted stucco. The Peruvian progress as I see it is a hybrid of many outsiders who have left their mark on this land and its people.

But, back to my point on progress. It has become clear to me that a culture that knows its environment, its land, and its heritage will more than likely Progress to its highest and best potential if allowed to, and not to be overcome by the will of the outsider. The outsider (even though they may have good intentions) will never be able to fully grasp the best path of progress of an indigenous people, unless he/she chooses to live within them and to become one of them. Only then can true shared progress be made, and the full potential be achieved.

I guess what I am try to say is, we as the developed world really cannot expect to transplant our way of life, our advancements, our progress on other cultures unless we are ready to invest our time and our lives in spending some time living with others to fully understand and appreciate the challenges they face.It is all about "walking that mile in the other man' shoes". In a world that grows smaller each day, I feel we need not to strive for a world that looks all the same, rather a world that embraces, respects and enjoys its differences.

Walking through the Sacred Valley of the Incas

My highest admiration goes out to the Yavs and the other that I met in Peru (Debbie, Harry, Rusty, Wendy and many others) who are doing just this. Hopefully, many more will follow, and through this, we can all progress together in our own individual and best way.

Jim “The Younger One” Irby (aka Brother Jim)

When I was in Peru, one of the kids that Ginna took care of in her church’s after school program asked me (knowing that I’d been to Tanzania) how I felt about Africa. I hesitated. How could I explain my ambivalence—my anger at the gross inequalities of a financial lottery that I had won by being born, but through which, by no fault of their own, the people I met had been relegated to extreme poverty; my bitterness at the stagnation of global policy, at the international lip service paid to helping the poor, but the general unwillingness to enact the policies necessary to improve global living conditions and provide for the general human welfare rather than the general national welfare; my love for the people I met; my (perhaps romanticized) view of their freedom from rampant consumerism; and my desire to meet them on a purely human level, to transcend the bounds of skin pigmentation and wealth and background, but my fear that these differences would always stand in the way? How could I explain this to a 13-year-old, especially one who was in a situation not so different than the children I met in Tanzania, and towards whom I felt this same ambivalence? Playing off my inability to answer the question as a result of my rusty Spanish skills, Ginna, thankfully, fielded the question for me.

But now, two weeks later, my sister refuses to let me off the hook. How do you feel about Peru? she asks. And the answer is no simpler. On one hand I loved Peru. Truly, I expected it to be great to see my sister after so long and to finally experience what she had been living for the past 9 months, but I did not expect to love Lima as much as I did. A huge, sprawling city, home to around 9 million, I felt an odd sense of security walking along the crowded city streets, standing in the aisles of the overcrowded buses, or making my way down the winding mountain roads in one of Lima’s poorest barrios. I liked the fact that as long as we were in Lima, we were very rarely ‘inside’—sure we went through doors sometimes, and there were often roofs above our heads, but almost always, buildings were open to the outside air, a property I found freeing in contrast to the enclosed boxes in which we spend most of our time on the northern half of the Americas. There was a sense of warmth and hospitality almost incomprehensible to my northern mind when the mother of Angie, one of Ginna’s poorest kids, invited us to climb down the ladder into her home (quite literally a two-room metal carton), where she was not concerned with impressing us, but only with making us feel at home. Despite not knowing us, despite the language barrier, despite receiving no benefit from our (with the exception of Ginna’s) presence in Peru, she went out of her way to take us in and give us something to drink (which she had to run down the street to buy).

The hill where Angie and most of my kids live

And of course there was the Inca trail. Imagine the most beautiful southwestern American landscape you’ve seen (I think of New Mexico), make the mountains twice as big and three times as steep, throw in an occasional rainforest and some Inca ruins, and let the mountains extend for miles beyond as far as the eye can see. Truly, it was breathtaking…

And if my feelings stopped there, my view of Peru would be simple. But beneath the beauty, the extreme and widespread poverty remains. Before I ever set foot in the low income parts of a low income country, I thought our goal as wealthy Americans should be to ‘fix’ the poor countries: we had the resources, the education, the ‘enlightened’ ideals, the business models that had generated success within our borders…if only we could get the rest of the world to see eye to eye with us… But as I spend more and more time in areas of poverty, I realize that the people I meet are far from broken, and while many aspects of life are indisputably better in the United States, a wholesale exportation of Americanized life is not the solution. To my knowledge no perfect system yet exists, and until one does, the solution will always require a creative mix of that which has existed in the past and that which we are newly bringing into existence. Taking the current system as it is, what then should be changed?

There was something wrong that led to the years of violence between Fujimori’s soldiers and the militias of the Shining Path; there’s something wrong when an American-owned mining company creates one of the world’s most polluted cities in La Oroya, and the Peruvian government is complicit because it needs the mines as a source of taxable income; there’s something wrong when people have to choose between theft and starvation, between thirst and drinking water that could make them sick, when health facilities are described as places where people go to die. The list goes on. And it’s easy to point fingers: at the exploitive nature of the global monetary economy, where I can only become richer if someone else becomes poorer, and the foundations of one country’s wealth are often the foundations of another country’s poverty; at the terrorist tactics of leftists, rightists, governments, and opportunists; at the poor themselves (it’s comforting to believe that people somehow deserve the conditions they were born into). It’s easy to get angry.

I’ve always been discomforted by the belief that charity starts at home. The most extreme poverty is pretty far away from us—in Africa, Asia, Latin America—and it is in these places that our dollar goes the furthest. But as I spend more time in these places, I realize that the people who say this may be on to something—only I’m realizing charity starts closer to home than I think they had originally meant. Charity starts in our ability to understand, and our understanding can only reach as far as we are willing to question. Travelling to the least developed countries always leaves me with more questions than answers: Why does Angie live in a box? Why don’t I? Why is there so much trash in the streets? Where does all our trash go? Why does America restrict imports on harmless goods? Why does Peru support industries that poison its people? Why is no one willing to clean it up? How many lead-poisoned children does it take to make a bar of gold? Is it worth it? Why did the leftist groups resort to violence? Why did Fujimori resort to violence? Why did the United States take sides? What policies and practices stand in the way of improved well being? Why haven’t they been changed? How am I complicit?

Climbing "Angie's hill" with the carton houses and one of my kids running up to meet us

I hate asking these questions because I hate guilt. I think to the extent that what’s done is done, it’s counterproductive to focus on blame and rekindling old grudges. But we can’t address problems until we understand them, and thus these questions must be asked. For now, and probably forever, I’m still working on the answers.

So how do I feel about Peru? I loved experiencing a way of life and a culture different from my habitual existence. I loved seeing human compassion that reached across wealth and race. I loved witnessing the work that is being done by religious and secular organizations to bridge the gap between the flawed world we live in and their idea of perfection. I’m unsettled that their goal seems so far away. I’m hopeful that in our efforts to connect through the good and to understand the flaws in both ourselves and in each other this goal may be closer than it appears.

Jim and me at Machu Picchu