Wake Up, Dead Man

I spent Holy Week on a retreat with Debbie and the YAVs in Huanta and Ayacucho. Alissa works and lives at a radio station there. It was an incredible cultural experience on many levels, but there’s one bit in particular that I want to share with you.

In past blogs, I’m sure I’ve alluded to the “Years of Violence” in Peru, from 1980 to 2000. It is, sadly enough, a pretty typical Latin American story. The Sendero Luminoso (“Shining Path”), a violent leftist group started by a professor at University in Ayacucho, began an insurgency fighting for a new leftist government that would end the extreme poverty that ravished the country and bring about financial equality. Good intentions, I think so, but they really just became a violent terrorist group. The military retaliated with violence and also carried out an inquisition, if you will, in search of leftist sympathizers that makes the McCarthy years in the US look laughable. Once again, I want to hope that good intentions were there at the start, but in the end the military killed more civilians than did the Sendero terrorist group. People today are still waiting to find out what happened to their loved ones as their bodies are uncovered in mass graves from when entire villages were killed because of rumors of terrorist connections.

The violence was felt in all corners of Peru – my host family has told me stories of walking over dead bodies in the streets of Lima – but the province of Ayacucho undoubtedly suffered the most. Alissa has told us that literally everyone in her community knew someone who was killed either by the Sendero or the military. These people have experienced violence, pain, and deaths in a way that I cannot even imagine.

Our first day in Huanta, Alissa’s family took us up to the “Mirador” (“look-out-point” from which you can see the entire city…these seem to be pretty popular in the mountain cities of Peru) where we, along with a HUGE white Jesus statue (think Jesus from the movie Saved times 10!) watched the town of Huanta in the valley below, a beautifully peaceful landscape. Gazing at the beauty before us, it was hard to imagine this area torn apart by violence only 10 or 15 years before.

On the way down from the Mirador, we stopped at a quaint, but fairly non-descript church on the side of the road. Alissa’s host-dad told us that during the Violence, a service at this church was interrupted by army officials bearing orders to detain and interrogate six young men. While the “terrorist suspects” were escorted out, the rest of the congregation refused to acknowledge the army’s presence and continued singing their hymns in an act of protest. After the service, the bodies of these young men were found not far from the church itself. It was evident that they had been brutally tortured before they were murdered.

This is just one story of many. One tragedy suffered by one community. But similar stories abound all over Peru. Last weekend I visited fellow YAV Anna in Huancayo, another “red zone” during the years of violence. In a conversation comparing the general behavior of people in Huancayo versus in my home of Lima, Anna commented that people in Huancayo tended to be more socially reserved and hesitant, more independent and inclined to fend for themselves. She attributed these behaviors to the effects of the Violence, when no one knew whom to trust and survival often entailed looking out for oneself and one’s family only. I forget too easily, I think, the immense impact that the Years of Violence still has on the lives and actions of my friends in Peru.

A few days later, we found ourselves in Ayacucho watching and waiting for the famous Good Friday procession over the alfombras, carpets made of colored sawdust and natural materials created solely to be trampled on in the holy procession, over which residents had slaved all day. We ate homemade ice cream, we browsed artisan markets, and we waited for the ceremony to begin. A fun day in a beautiful city.

But as the procession began and I watched the statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, accompanied by hundreds upon hundreds of devotees, walk solemnly around the Central Plaza, I was struck by the juxtaposition of Holy Week and the deaths of so many innocent campesinos at the hands of terrorists and government authorities. Because if we strip away all of the fancy theological trappings in which we have dressed him, who is Jesus but a political revolutionary killed by the Roman government? Martyred for his social ideals of justice, love, and equality that by their very nature threatened the concept of empire. Jesus, the one that we as Christians call Lord and Savior, the one in whose honor this procession was taking place, was just like those young men tortured and killed on the hill by the church. And in turn, those men, and the countless other men and women who suffered at the hands of the government without cause are just like Jesus. To blatantly steal imagery from the liberation theologians (I’m allowed to do that, I dedicated last year to researching and writing a thesis on the current state and theological validity of liberation theology), in the suffering, the deaths, the hunger, the poverty, the exploitation, the unjust detainment of each of these men and women, Christ was crucified again and again. And it continues today, in the Peru, in the US, in every part of the world. People are killed and exploited, poverty and dependence are the ever-enforced norm, and in each of these moments, Christ is crucified de nuevo.

My Peruvian friends understand Good Friday in a way that I may never be able to. But I leave you (and myself) with this question: Have they seen resurrection? Have we seen resurrection? What does resurrection in this situation look like? Is it the recovery of the remains of loved ones “disappeared,” a final answer to the question that have been lingering for so many years? Is it the conviction and imprisonment of Fujimori for the human rights abuses he committed? Is in the restoration of, at least relatively speaking, “peace?” Renewed relationships? Or is it, perhaps, an end to the social situation that fostered the violence in the first place? Liberation from poverty? An end to the imperialist policies of nations like our own that keep countries like Peru in an interminable state of dependence? Have we seen and taken part in this resurrection, or are we still crouched outside the tomb, waiting? Is it possible that this time, we’re going to have to work together to roll away the stone?

Just An Ordinary Day (And It´s All Your State of Mind)

So I’ve written about highs and lows, anecdotes and full-blown stories, the theological and the political, vacations and retreats, but I realized recently I’ve never just given you all an idea of what I do on a normal day. Now granted, I have a lot of different versions of “normal days” seeing as I’m currently working in three different places, but I’ll do my best to describe “just an ordinary day” link (last Thursday, actually) working in the Compassion Program at the IEP Collique.

My alarm goes off at 7:00 AM. I snooze it, wrestle with it, and eventually manage to turn it off – consequently I oversleep until 8:00. My roommate and next-door-neighbors from last year (Hi Bizz, Sarah, and Abby!), who probably still have nightmares about my alarm going off every 5 minutes in college, may note that there are some things about me that just never change.

I reluctantly get out of bed and try to motivate myself to do some sort of devotional. I’ve tried several different strategies for personal devotionals since I arrived in Peru and have had a hard time finding one that clicks. I’ve tried reading through the Book of Acts (felt irrelevant to what I’m doing here), daily journaling (kept falling asleep), selecting random passages from Scripture (felt aimless and unfocused), an Advent journaling devotional from the PCUSA(was awesome, but ran out at the end of Advent), reading from a book of John Bell sermons (excellent devotional material, but book only lasted me 12 days), following devotional tracks in The Green Bible that Andy gave me for Christmas (wonderful material that I will definitely use for devotionals in the future, but didn’t provide the personal comfort and encouragement I’ve been needing recently), etc. My most recent attempt is re-reading Henri Nouwen’s link travel journal from his time in Peru and Bolivia, Gracias, and reflecting on what he has to say in light of my experience in living here nearly 7 months. It seems to be working pretty well…relevant, lots of material…I’ve got a good feeling about this one!

I make my way to the bathroom for my bi-weekly shower before work. As the heat of summer set in, I abandoned my old bucket shower using boiled water and now just take a straight-up cold shower. I still haven’t gotten used to it, but it’s much quicker and helps me face the heat of the day.

I make myself a quick breakfast - a roll of bread that is standard breakfast food here, sometimes with some cheese or jam. Eduardo has already left for work, but Flor hears me awake and comes out to talk with me for a few minutes over breakfast before going back to take care of Fabián. I brush my teeth, gather my things, and head out the door to work.

To get to work I first catch a colectivo, a taxi that goes to a specific location and fills up with as many people as possible, who only have to each pay part of the fare. I get out, cross the street and take a little blue combi, a variation on the Volkswagen-hippie-van that my brother wants to drive one day, the rest of the way to the church where I am greeted by shouts of “Hermana Ginna” (Sister Ginna), the title used for pretty much everyone within the churches here. It originally made me feel like I was either a nun or part of some cult, but I’ve gotten used to it by this point. It also makes life TREMENDOUSLY easier when you can’t remember someone’s name…you can just greet them as Hermana (sister) or Hermano (brother). I can’t tell you how many times that has rescued me in an awkward church situation!

On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I alternate between all different ages and levels, but on Thursdays like today only the youngest level, the 3-to-6-year-olds, come in for the whole day, so I’m always with them. This makes Thursday the most cuteness-filled and also the most exhausting day of work. There are about 10 to 15 kids in the morning and then a different group of about the same number in the afternoon!

Walking into the room of kids is always one of my favorite parts. They all stop what they’re doing, yell “Hermana Ginna!” and run as fast as they can to hug and kiss me. I honestly don’t know what I’ve done to warrant that kind of love…is it just because I look different? Talk funny? Am only with them on certain days? I don’t deserve their affection nearly as much as the other teachers there who run the classes and work so much harder than I do. But it’s love, and I’ll gladly receive it, especially in a culture where hugs are rare and showing emotion can be taboo. There’s something incredibly beautiful and refreshing about kids this age.

They start the day playing among themselves, and then eventually the teacher rounds them up for some singing (I feebly try to help with this part), a little bit of Jesus-talk (considering the great differences between my theology and that of the teacher, I try to keep quiet for the most part in this, not wanting to confuse the kids by arguing theology and ethics with the other teacher. It’s hard…as most of you know, I’m not very good at keeping quiet!) and some sort of education time – today it’s reviewing different symptoms of different sicknesses, how to take care of ourselves, and when we should ask our parents to take us to the doctor. I can always get excited about some good public health education. And the pictures they use to demonstrate the sicknesses are straight up hilarious!

Diarrhea. In case you couldn´t figure that out...

After this we join hands and walk to the park several blocks away. It’s a pretty humble park – a slide, some monkey-bars, and a set of seesaws, only one of which actually works the way it was intended – but the kids love it! Today I’ve got monkey-bar-duty: I hold the kids up as one by one they make their way across the monkey bars…I can only hope it’s a good arm workout!

When we get back from the park, it’s time for lunch, so we get the kids seated, say a prayer, and I start passing out the food while the other teacher leads them in a resounding chorus of a song called “Los Alimentos”, basically explaining how we eat. It’s become out of my favorites.

The kids eat (and so do we, between some combination of refilling cups, cleaning up spilled drinks, feeding the kids when they’re being picky eaters, and dolling out toothpaste when they’re done) A flurry of cheek kisses and they’re gone, leaving us with a little peace and quiet and time to clean everything up before the afternoon group arrives.

Often the afternoon group has the same activities as the morning group, but not today. After a LONG lunch (these kids don’t want to eat today…I think I end up having to feed at least 5 of them their lunches. However, it is canned tuna…so can I really blame them?), the kids play among themselves for a bit and the teacher informs me she’s leaving to go talk with one of the parents but will be back in a few minutes. This sentence always puts a little dread in my heart as 1.) It’s hard to control 15 kids period, especially when I’m operating in my second language and 2.) “A few minutes” or “A little bit” in Peru usually means anywhere from half an hour to an hour.

So we carry on for awhile, until Pierro, who I love and adore but has some anger issues, gets upset about something and starts throwing chairs around the room (honestly, this is really a weekly occurrence with him). I finally get to him and wrestle him into a chair (one of the ones he was throwing, ironically enough) and tell him that we’re just going to sit there for 5 minutes until he calms down and has had some time to think about what he’s doing. Time out is not used her as a punishment, but the kids have learned to expect it from me…it’s really one of the only ways I know how to discipline these kids. I am not comfortable administering physical punishment, they don’t take me very seriously when I talk to them because I will inevitably make some language mistake that discredits me in their mind (at this age they don’t really understand the concept that I speak another language and had to learn Spanish, they just think I’m stupid), so time out it is. Pierro’s pretty resistant today, continues trying to struggle out of the chair, and eventually bites me, but gives up on that when I don’t react. My pain tolerance has definitely increased since coming here. While I’m still trying to sit with Pierro, the other teacher comes back, I explain what’s going on, and she takes him over to talk with her. After literally one minute, he comes over in tears and apologizes. She’s got a magic touch with those kids that I can only admire and try to learn from.

Pierro, pretending to be a lion, about an hour before he bit me. I should have seen it coming...

A little later, we turn on some music and a few of the girls who were in a “choreography” (can’t use the word “dancing”) workshop over the summer do their dances to the music. They’re super cute, and honestly at the age of 5 are better dancers than I will ever be. We dance until they finally get tired, when the teacher rounds them up and sends them over to the tables to finish the day with a craft.

To my surprise, even though the class is both boys and girls, we’re making bracelets. But the boys don’t seem at all phased by this – they’ve got soccer balls and Indian beads for their bracelets, so all is well. Much to my relief, no chairs are thrown this time.

The kids finish their bracelets, their parents come to pick them up, and after another round of clean-up, the teacher and I are free to go. I take the combi most of the way home, but stop at an internet café to check emails (mostly copy and paste them to my USB drive so I can read them when I get home!) and, inevitably, g-chat with the other YAVs. As much as we laugh about it, it really is good for us to be able to be there to support one another and share crazy stories of the day (today I am super excited to share the story of getting bitten!).

The afternoon girls doing their dance

I leave the cabina and walk about 20 blocks or so to my house. I always love this walk – it gives me some time to clear my head, get some exercise, people watch, etc. When I get home, Flor and Fabián are there, but Eduardo still hasn’t made it back from work (his new job with the Presbytery has him working pretty far way), so I greet them and then head to my room to actually read those emails I picked up at the internet café and relax by myself for a little bit. Later, when Eduardo gets home, Flor calls us in to dinner where we chat some and watch “Al Fondo Hay Sitio”, the hit Peruvian prime-time soap opera (and INCREDIBLY popular song of the same name), on the small kitchen TV.

After dinner I wash the dishes (this has become my dinner chore since we all know me cooking is a bad idea…), kick the soccer ball around in the living room with Fabián for a little bit (not sure that’s really a good idea either), and we head to our separate rooms. I listen to music, read, do more emails, and sometimes watch a movie before falling into an exhausted sleep, often still dressed and with the light on.

I’m startled out of my sleep by the alarm going off at 7 AM. I immediately reach to snooze it, and we start all over again!

Wanderin´ Around

Finally, my friends, after much waiting, catching up on old blogs, and a lovely bout with the Giardia bacteria, I’m excited to bring you some stories and pictures from my December/January vacation! I, along with the other YAVs (in shifts…oh and also Anna’s mom!) gave ourselves a little “coastal tour of Peru,” if you will, that included visits to Arequipa, Paracas, Lima, Trujillo, Huanchaco, and Huaraz. The trip was a wonderful break from my regular routine and a great chance to get to know more of Peru (before our vacation, I had only been in Lima, where I live, and in Huánuco for a long-weekend retreat…remember climbing the waterfalls?). I was very excited to get out of town! There’s no way I’ll be able to describe all of our adventures or post all of my photos (though I am going to try to post at least some of them to facebook…I’ll make sure I make a link on a blog so that you guys can see them even if you aren’t on facebook!), so I’d like to give you a quick look at each place we visited: the good, the bad, and the absurd.

Arequipa

Plaza de Armas in Trujillo

The Good: Arequipa is a beautiful mountain city in the South of Peru. It’s the second most populated after Lima, but is considerably cleaner and has a nice little coast-meets-mountains charm about it. It’s also situated around some beautiful dormant (we hope…) volcanoes and has beautiful hiking nearby. We had the opportunity to go to the very old and famous Monastery de Santa Catalina that’s a full city block full of historical relics and vivid colors! We also went to the museum where they keep “Juanita” the Ice Princess, the frozen mummy of a girl sacrificed in the mountains near Arequipa!

The Bad: Because we only had two days to stay, we didn’t get to hike into the famous and beautiful Colca Canyon. Looking at pictures from Joe and Alissa, who did, we really missed out on some pretty incredible views!

The Absurd: We couldn’t find typical Arequipeña food! Here we were smack dab in the center of a big city famous for its unique spicy cuisine, and all we could find was fried calamari! Oh well, I guess I’ll have to save my cravings for ocopa or ricotta rellena for the occasional special days at the corner restaurants in Lima!

Paracas

The Good: A beautiful beach town a few hours south of Lima in the region called Ica, where you can also find the famous Nazca lines. Very close to Pisco, a town where the famous Peruvian liquor of the same name originated, best known for its use in the Pisco sour (think a small, strong margarita made with whisky instead of tequila and with a touch of cinnamon!). Paracas itself is famous for the Ballestas Islands that you can tour early in the morning and see all sorts of beautiful wildlife, including beautiful tropical birds (according to Brian I should be looking out for “incredible birding” down here), manatees (which I ate for breakfast the other day without knowing it! I feel like a terrible person!) and of course, Andy’s favorite, SEALS!

The Bad: Well, we never actually made it to Paracas. We had everything lined up and reserved, but when we got to the bus station in Arequipa, the lady at the desk calmly informed us that the bus had never shown up in Arequipa and therefore would not be leaving for Paracas. We’d have to wait til the next night (not really much of an option, since we only had one day scheduled in Paracas!), so after some serious spur of the moment rebooking, we were refunded our money (with a fake S./200 bill…good thing yours truly has become an expert at spotting the fakes!) and got on another bus line taking us directly to Lima, our mid-trip destination. Bummer! I guess the seals will have to wait!

The Absurd: News abounds about the terrifying, fatal Peruvian bus crashes, and while in Arequipa, our site coordinator Debbie sent us an article about some particularly bad crashes that had just occurred with a not-so-subtle reminder to only take the best and most secure bus lines, since these crashes happen more often on the cheaper bus lines. But of course, in line with the absurdity of our vacation, while on the nicest, fancy-schmanciest, gringo-flooded Cruz del Sur bus line, we experienced our first (and hopefully last!) Peruvian bus crash! Well, Anna and Sarah Alta did, at least. Baja and I slept through the whole thing! It was pretty minor and only held us up for about an hour or so, but Baja and I were pretty bummed to wake up the next morning and find out we’d missed the adventure!

Lima

Parque de Amor in Miraflores

The Good: Delicious food, an exciting night-life, and lots of restaurants that give you a free pisco sour with your meal! We spent New Years’ (and the day before, since we didn’t end up in Paracas!) in Lima so that we could switch off Baja, who’d been travelling with us for the first half of the trip, for Alissa, who would join us for the second half. We stayed in a really fun (maybe a little too fun…) hostal in Miraflores within walking distance from the beach, the Parque de Amor (a free park by the water of beautiful mosaics intertwined with quotes about love), the “Central Park” area of Miraflores, and an incredible, fair-trade organic coffee shop with the only Chai Latte I’ve found in Peru!

The Bad: While we were in a different part of Lima (Miraflores…about a two hour bus-ride from Carabayllo, where I live) from my usual neck of the woods, it was still a bit of a bummer to spend more of our vacation time than intended in Lima, my home turf. We certainly had a good time, but nothing was new and exciting, it was all stuff that I, at least, had seen and done before.

The Absurd: On the way to the airport to meet her parents, Baja and I had a super-talkative taxi driver (always the most fun!) who was very interested in our lives, what we were doing in Peru, and what kind of men appealed to Baja, particularly if she had a thing for midgets (important note…this man was not a midget! He just legitimately wanted to know if Baja was into them). In the end, he told her that she was going to end up marrying a midget but losing him on her honeymoon because he’d be so small she wouldn’t be able to find him. I’m telling you, absurd.

Trujillo

Ruins from Huaca de la Luna

The Good: Famous Northern coastal city with lots and lots of ancient Incan and pre-Incan ruins. Of all the ones we visited, my favorite was certainly Huaca de La Luna, which means Temple of the Moon, a lesser-known temple than the more famous Chan-Chan, that in some places has up to 7 or 8 layers of excavation exposed! It was pretty amazing to see different layers/different epochs of old murals displayed right next to each other...really gave me a sense of the complexity of the history of this country!

The Bad: Trujillo is actually not that interesting of a city. A Peruvian friend advised us that it would be much better if we spent one night there instead of our intended two and spent the extra night in Huanchaco, a beach town about 15 minutes from Trujillo. Trusting our vast knowledge of Peruvian tourism and guidebooks over native advice, we spent two nights in Trujillo and did end up regretting that use of our time. The ruins were fabulous, but could have been done in one day. Lesson: Always trust the locals!

The Absurd: Trujillo is where I began to show the symptoms of what, I would find out a month later, was Giardiasis. In the mist of this, we came home from touring one day and I found myself wanting nothing more than a serious butt massage. When I said this outloud (not sure I really intended to), Anna’s mom immediately offered, and minutes later, I found myself receiving a butt massage from my friend’s mom that I had met, under rather strange circumstances, less than a week ago. Oh geez.

Huanchaco

Sunset in Huanchaco

The Good: Absolutely gorgeous beach town with a really fun hostal! We ended up staying two nights after all (and just cutting one night from our Huaraz stay) and enjoyed the relaxing pace of sleeping in the morning, heading to the beach for the afternoon, eating a delicious dinner (especially at an amazing vegetarian restaurant with $3 piña coladas and a wonderful view of the sunset over the water (that’s right kids, we’re at the Pacific ocean where the sun SETS over the water! Crazy!), and staying up late at night playing cards on the hostal porch. Great seafood and just a relaxing visit.

The Bad: The second morning, while everyone else was still in bed, Anna and I decided to be brave, get ourselves out of bed before 10 AM, and go read and talk on the beach. Which we did, and it was wonderful. And we even put on copious amounts of sunscreen. Or so we thought…that afternoon with both found ourselves painfully sunburned, me in a strange pattern on my legs where I must have missed several pretty large spots. That sunburn didn’t even begin to fade for about a week! Bring on the aloe!!

Just a little glimpse of my sunburn...

The Absurd: Our hostal had a turtle for a pet just chillin’ in the main lobby area, along with tables and hammocks. Best hostal mascot EVER!

Huaraz

My first glacier!

The Good: I saw my first (and hopefully not last, but you just never know at the rate we´re going…) glacier! It really was an amazing sight! You know if you’d asked me before I came here if there were glaciers in Peru, I’m not sure how I would have answered. But it turns out yes, there are in fact glaciers in Peru, and I had the privilege to “hike”/walk around the glacial silt and lake of one. It really was a wonder of nature….and HUGE! We walked in for over an hour, hoping to have the opportunity to touch some of the actual glacial ice, but no matter how much we walked, the glacier itself seemed just as far away! We did get some great pictures, though, and the opportunity to dip our toes in the ice-cold (literally!) glacial lake.

The Bad: Altitude sickness: apparently it’s a real thing. Huaraz in the Andes at an altitude of 10,000 ft, and the point where we went to start our glacial walk was considerably higher than the city itself. Anna and Alissa live in Huancayo and Huanta, respectively, both mountain towns of high elevation in the Andes. Alta had sent the last 4 months living in Huancavelica, another mountain town high enough that, I believe, you can actually just walk onto the moon. And then of course there was me, who has lived in the swamp that is William & Mary and am now living in Lima, a costal desert, whose altitude is más o menos the same height as Baja’s future midget husband. I found myself very easily tired/out of breath, dizzy, and basically just feeling like I was constantly drunk. This was particularly hard on our walk, as I felt bad for being so weak and slow and didn’t want to hold anyone up. However, every time I mentioned that I felt bad for being the “weakest link,” Anna reminded me that 1.) It was really ok, they were acclimated to the altitude from their living situations and I simply wasn’t, and 2.) I needed to suck it up and let them know when I was getting lightheaded so I could sit down our I was going to pass out, fall down one of the ledges we were walking along, die, and then be, excuse the terrible pun, but “dead weight” to carry back instead of just the “weakest link.” I found this argument rather convincing.

The Absurd: We left Huaraz on an overnight bus ride back to Lima, our fifth one in the course of two weeks. Speaking as someone who’s never been very good at sleeping in moving vehicles, those bus rides will take their toll on you! Fortunately, I’d had some success in the past popping a Dramamine pill (thank you Alissa!) that, even though I don’t get motion sickness, does a pretty good job of helping me get at least a few hours of sleep. However, the night of this bus ride, I found out that you can actually take two Dramamine pills at a time, and I figured hey, it’ll just make it an even better sleep! I could not have been more wrong. I became a crazy, half-asleep zombie of sorts. Well, a cuddly zombie. Anna, who had the great misfortune of sitting next to me during this bus ride, swears that at some point in the night I confused her for Andy link and kept cuddling up to her and just throwing myself across her seat. While the possibility that I had Andy on the brain is certainly very high, I’m sure my high school and college friends can attest to the fact that, especially when I’m already at least somewhat asleep, I can be rather indiscriminate in my cuddling attacks and am pretty horrible at sleeping in a small, confined space.

But that’s only the beginning. Along with becoming the cuddling zombie, I began to do absolutely absurd things in my sleep. Sleep talking is pretty normal, but when I started to sleep direct an orchestra, with my arms flailing everywhere, Anna became a bit more concerned. Then at some point I ended up leaning forward in my sleep and, every time the bus moved, banging my head rather hard into the food tray on the back of the seat in front of me. I’m sure whoever was sitting there was thrilled. I’d say, though, that it all culminated when I woke up with Anna staring at me, very concerned, and my seatbelt in my mouth (apparently I was hungry?).

So two lessons were learned from that trip. 1.) I will never take more than 1 Dramamine pill at a time, and 2.) Anna will never, as long as she lives, sit next to me on a bus again.

So there you have it – my Christmas vacation! These stories here can’t even begin to describe all of our adventures, but let’s just say it was pretty hard to get back into settle back into my daily routine in Carabayllo after such a great little “Tour de Peru”, if you will.

Now there is, I’m sure, at least one of you, who is very concerned that I did not go see Cuzco and Machu Picchu during this vacation, especially since the news has probably reached you about the mudslides that have wreaked so much havoc on the area. Rest assured, the other YAVs (minus Sarah Alta…sad!) and I will be going in May to hike the Inca Trail as part of our May vacation. And the most exciting part of this: my parents and brother Jim are coming! (We will greatly miss brother Jack, but it’s his final Freeman Jazz Band Concert and, as the only bari sax, he really couldn’t miss it.) So don’t worry, I will not spend a year in Peru without seeing one of the Seven Wonders of the World. But for now, I’m off to work and will soon head to a beach retreat in Máncora, a city in the north of Peru. When I get back, expect news on that, my new job working with Fair Trade link, some thought-provoking conversations, and a whole lot of bugs. So for now, my friends, chau, cuíadensen mucho!

I Wasn't Home for Christmas

I Wasn’t Home for Christmas

It’s as simple as that. I wake up January 19, look at the calendar, wonder where Christmas went and how it got to be 2010, and then I remember.

Oh yeah. I spent Christmas in Peru. Crazy.

This was the first Christmas of my life that I’ve spent away from my family, my house, my bed, my church, my dinner table, my tree – whatever sign of homeliness and familiarity we decide to use, this was the first time I was far from any of it. I missed it, for sure, but mostly in the days leading up to Christmas, in Advent (my favorite season of all, liturgical or otherwise), the season of expectation. A certain excitement and warmth builds within us as we wait for…something. What exactly we don’t know. The coming of the Christ child? Getting to light the big white candle? (Personally the pink candle was always my favorite.) Finally getting to find out what’s inside that present? The Monroe/Block Christmas Party? The Christmas pageant? The Christmas pig? The infamous “Christmas Stew” that you eat for weeks after Christmas and basically consists of everything you ate for Christmas dinner thrown together in a pot? The day when your kids finally let you change the radio station form Lite 98? We don’t really know. But it’s somewhere in the waiting that the Christmas spirit always finds me.

So this year, as I was waiting, I had the very disconcerting realization that I had no idea, really, what I was waiting for. None of the things listed above were going to happen for me this year. Except for the coming of the Christ child, I guess, but who really knows what that means anyway. I wasn’t in much of a mood for divine mysteries.

So I was excited, I was sad, I had new learning experiences, I spent an inordinate amount of time with Sarah Alta at Megaplaza because in some strange way, the lights and banter of the mall were the closest thing I could find to my experiences of US Christmases. (As a side note, I actually don’t mind commercialized Christmas. Sure, it’s very easy to miss the point and important to remind ourselves that we are really celebrating the humble birth of a man who lived a life of revolutionary love and was to change history forever, but for me, there’s something exciting, sentimental, and romantic about the lights, the music, the excited kids…it just does it for me.) I ate too much, exchanged gifts, cried on the phone with my family (sorry about that, guys…), watched Love Actually and had myself a Peruvian Christmas. I’m still processing what it was to spend Christmas away from home and experience it in a completely different cultural context – I may not finish processing that until next Christmas. But for now, I’ll try to describe for you, as best I can, my Peruvian Christmas.

First of all, as many of you know, working in the church makes for a crazy Christmas season. And it certainly was busy and crazy, but not as much as I expected. You see, for a culture in which church and religious practice are often treated as the most essential and core part of one’s life, Christmas is surprisingly…unchurchly. Christmas itself is really about family here. Each of the two churches I work for had a Christmas service, but one was December 20^th and the other the 23^rd. Christmas Eve services don’t happen in the IEP (though I’m willing to bet something like that exists in the Catholic church…).

In the IEP Ingeniería, the service was a little bit like a big Christmas talent show with interspersed songs (though most weren’t Christmas songs), a mini Christmas story reenactment, and a sermon. And then when everything was done, we drank hot chocolate (even though it’s summer here) and ate Paneton, the traditional Peruvian Christmas food which is best described as a lighter, fluffier, and much more delicious version of fruitcake. Each of the children present received a present bought by the church especially for him or her and everyone was happy and full of Christmas spirit. Not the same feeling I get at the Christmas Eve service at home, but still, the presence of a spirit of joy.

The service at the IEP Collique was less remarkable and less interesting, but along the same lines…talent show-esque with a sermon worked in there and Paneton and hot chocolate afterward.

Another interesting note –at both churches, where secular music, stories, really secular anything is often frowned-upon, the altars and front of the sanctuaries were decorated with what we call “tacky-Christmas-lights”, Christmas trees, and basically things you would never find in the sanctuary of a typical PCUSA church in the states. Like I said it’s interesting to see the differences across culture of what we to be sacred.

As I said earlier, there’s no Christmas Eve service. In fact, Christmas itself is celebrated on the 24^th, our Christmas Eve, at midnight. It’s much like our conception of New Years (or Michael Scott’s conception of marriage, if you’ve seen the episode of The Office where Jim and Pam get married). The whole extended family gathers at the home of some relative and waits anxiously for midnight, when they can officially begin Christmas dinner, a great feast in the middle of the night (quite a surprise for the stomach, since in Peru lunch is the biggest meal of the day and you don’t usually go to bed with a lot of food on your stomach). Christmas dinner consists of turkey, rice prepared with Coca-Cola (not kidding!), lots of other delicious dishes, and ends with (you guessed it!) Paneton!

Another exciting and totally new thing for me about Christmas is that at midnight, when it officially becomes “Christmas Day,” EVERYONE sets off fireworks. I mean everyone. I’m not sure about the legality of fireworks in Peru, but as my host family once reminded me, “prohibido” doesn’t really mean that much here. It’s bigger than any Fourth of July show I’ve ever seen, really an amazing sight. And such a contrast to the “Silent Night” that I think of when I think of Christmas night. It was a sight to be seen. I can honestly say I have never and probably never will again celebrate Christmas in such a loud, festive, boisterous way!

The 25^th, the big Christmas Day for us, is more of a day of rest in Peru. As you can imagine, if you started dinner in your relatives’ house across town at midnight the night before, you’re not much for waking up early on Christmas Morning. I think Alta and I got out of bed around noon. We went to Flor’s family’s house for Christmas lunch (we’d been with Eduardo’s family the night before) but before, as we were wrapping presents, made sure to listen to the Messiah (typical Christmas music at my house), Amy Grant Christmas songs (Typical Terpstra fam Christmas music), and Mannheim Steamroller, which feels like home to both of us. We also spent much of the time that she was here with me sitting on my bed harmonizing to Christmas Carols, mostly minor, of course!

At Flor’s family’s house we had another delicious turkey meal and did a Secret Santa gift exchange among the adults (all the kids got some sort of tricycle). Then we came back, crashed, I called my family and cried, Sarah talked with her host family from Huancavelica…and we ate some more Paneton. Not kidding. And that was it. That was Christmas. We left the next day for vacation (which will be my next blog post, coming soon, I promise). Very surreal, and looking back, it doesn’t feel like Christmas actually happened. It was just all so different. Like I said, I’m still very much processing it. If I come to any great insights about the interconnectedness of the whole world in the birth of the one poor child who changed the world (and there’s 10 million more who probably could…), I’ll be sure to let y’all know. But who knows. Come Christmas next year, maybe I’ll find myself feeling a little homesick for fireworks, summer weather, and of course Paneton!

Share the Well

News Year’s greetings, and my apologies for having gone a month between posts! Between Christmas, vacation, getting back into work, trying to plan for hiking the Inca Trail when my family comes in May (!!!), starting some new things at work (will write more about that another day) and sermon writing, I haven’t had much down time to dedicate to blogging about Christmas or traveling, though those will certainly be coming soon! But for now, I’ve got this long-overdue post to share with you!

As I sat on my bed last night, just having finished writing my third sermon, I realized that I hadn’t yet translated and posted my second sermon for you all to read! Which is a shame, really, because I preached it back at the end of November and actually liked what I wrote better than my first sermon.

(Notice I said what I wrote. I don’t think the delivery of this one was as good. That was probably a combination of many things, including too much caffeine, nerves from having all my fellow YAVs sitting in the congregation, and just having come off of our Thanksgiving retreat. But I am going to go ahead and blame it all on having played the card game “Nerts” for 2 hours before worship. If you have never played, it is THE MOST STRESSFUL card game in the world. Yet addicting. Curse you, Anna, why did you get me hooked on that darn game?)

Anyway, the sermon’s pretty self-explanatory (and fortunately delivery doesn’t count here because you’re reading it…hooray!), but I wanted to point out one item of interest. At the beginning of December, right after I’d preached this sermon and when I ought to have posted it on my blog, Andy put up an interesting blog post based on this exact same text. Check it out here. Our interpretations of the text are pretty similar (not really a surprise, if you know us), but he used the analogy of stone soup to explain this story to a Sunday school class, and apparently it really clicked with them. (If you don’t know what stone soup is, you should click on the words “stone soup” above…it’s a lot of fun, and it really is a great comparison!) So that’s all to say great minds think alike. Or crazy ones. Remains to be seen.

Sermon at la Ingeniería, 11/29/09

Mark 6:30-44

“The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest for a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.

Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, Jesus saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things.

When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.’ But he answered them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ They said to him, ‘Are we to go and buy two hundred dinarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?’ And he said to them, ‘How many loaves have you? Go and see.’ When they had found out, they said, ‘Five, and two fish.’

Then Jesus ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.”

There’s nothing like a great feast. This Thursday, my friends from the United States and I celebrated Thanksgiving, a holiday in which family and friends gather together and share a meal, giving thanks to God for all of God’s blessings. It can be anywhere between a small, intimate gathering and a grand, extravagant party. In my house, Thanksgiving usually includes my parents, grandparents, brothers, and me. But for my college roommate (hi Bizz!), every year there are more than 50 people! I think she told me once there were three turkeys. Talk about a family reunion!

This year was the first Thanksgiving that I did not celebrate with my family. And yes, it was hard to be so far from so many of the most important people in my life. But I was with good people, a new family of sorts. And, like always, we shared a meal. We ate turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and some of the best stuffing I’ve ever had (thanks Alissa!), continuously giving thanks go God. There is something special, something sacred, about sharing food in this manner.

Jesus also loved sharing meals with others. In the Gospels, he is always breaking bread with whoever, whatever type of person is around, and using food in his parables. For example, “The Kingdom of God is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.” Or, “Therefore, every good tree will bear good fruit, but the bad tree will bear bad fruit.” Or how about, “Truly I tell you, the harvest is plenty, but the workers few.” “I am the bread of life, anyone who comes to me will never be hungry…” I could go on and on.

Our text today is an example of Jesus sharing a huge meal, one of 5,000 men and, as Matthew reminds us in his Gospel, this number doesn’t even include women and children! Now my roommate’s 50-person-Thanksgiving doesn’t seem so big anymore…

There are many ways in which we can interpret and learn from this text. I am going to use one of these to explain and preach this text tonight, and for some of you all, it might be a very different interpretation than the way in which you usually read this text. That is completely fine. In using my interpretation, I am not trying to negate other valid, educated attempts to read and understand this text. On the contrary, I want to affirm that within the many dimensions Mark has included in this story, there is a message that speaks directly to our economic, social, and ecological responsibility as Christians. And tonight, it is on this level that are going to encounter the Word of God.

That said, let’s look at the text:

At the beginning of the story, Jesus’s disciples have returned from their time of mission, and they are on their way to rest and, of course, eat with Jesus in a deserted place, far from civilization and the crowds seeking out Jesus to heal their sick and preach to them. But, as always, word spreads, and the crowds find Jesus. And, in his great compassion, Jesus accepts them and teaches them.

But afternoon turns into evening, and the disciples start to get worried – What are these people going to eat? The disciples know they’ve brought enough for their own dinner, but what’s going to happen to the crowds? They ask Jesus to dismiss them, to send them off to buy their own food.

And how does Jesus respond? “You give them something to eat.” Excuse me? The disciples? Provide food for more than 5,000 people? Jesus’s disciples were not rich men, or if they had been, they weren’t anymore, having left everything to follow him. We can understand their surprise, their frustration. 200 denarii, a very conservative estimate of what it would cost to buy enough food, was equivalent to eight months’ salary! They do not have this kind of money. Feeding all these people seems like a project far beyond what they are capable of.

But Jesus responds, “How many loaves do you have?” And in the end, between the loaves and fishes brought by the disciples and the crowd, Jesus feeds them all. And all ate and were satisfied.

It’s a miracle, is it not? All ate and were satisfied. The power and love of God are revealed in the parting, the sharing of bread. **Note – this is a play on words in Spanish. Parting is partiendo and sharing is compartiendo…so this line is a bit cleverer than it appears…**

If I understand the text, Jesus is trying to teach us that there is enough. He didn’t call down bread from Heaven, bring it in from somewhere else – the food was already there. Jesus shared what they had, and it was enough.

There is enough. This is a bold declaration, isn’t it? In a world of hunger, how can we say there is enough food? In a world of pollution and waste, how can we say there is enough water? In a world where we exploit nature and destroy the environment, in a world of Global Warming, how can we say there is enough space, enough natural resources, enough life, even, for everyone? It is in fact a very bold proclamation. But it is the proclamation of Jesus, and as Christians, it is our joy and our responsibility to live this reality and this proclamation.

I encountered this reality last month, in the jungle of Tingo María. I was on a retreat with my fellow YAVs in Huánuco, and we went to Tingo María for a day to climb waterfalls. It was my first time in a jungle – there is no jungle in my country. And I can say with completely sincerity, that I have never seen anything like the nature in the jungle. One of the other YAVs said it better than I can: “This is a place where life just wants to live.” It’s abundance. It’s harmony. It’s the creation of God. And in this creation, there is enough.

But if there is enough, what happened? Well, we know what happened, right? It’s what would have happened if Jesus had not been with the people that day in the desert. Those who had food would have eaten well and those who didn’t have food would have gone home hungry. This is how it is in our world today. With food, with water, with all of our natural resources. A few have too much and others, the majority, don’t have enough. Many don’t have any at all. We have forgotten Jesus’s miracle, the miracle of sharing. Instead of abundance, we have greed. Instead of harmony, we have selfishness. We waste and squander God’s creation. We distribute resources unjustly, and if we don’t change our ways right now, we are going to destroy the world that God has created and has called good.

Understanding this grave truth, we hear the good news of Jesus that, if we can learn to share, there will be enough for everyone. It is important for us to notice that this text doesn’t say that when, because of our sins and greed, there isn’t enough, God will intervene and will provide what we need. This is very dangerous theology. Very dangerous because it gives us permission to consume freely, to waste our natural resources, our gifts from God, and to justify ourselves saying, “The Lord will provide.” It’s dangerous. It’s harmful.

I’m not saying that the Lord doesn’t provide. God already has provided. And it is now our responsibility to care for and share that with which God has provided us.

Jesus looked for what bread the people already had, he blessed it, and he broke it. And all ate and were satisfied. The miracle of this story is not that food was provided but that food was shared. In the presence of Jesus, we can share what we have and there is enough.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, let us share in every moment. Let us remember that justice for God’s people and care for the future of God’s creation are our responsibilities. Let us not squander that which God has given us.

There is enough. Living in simplicity, let us share with one another. Only then will we truly live in the abundance of God. Amen.