closure

I've been in my new site in Pisco, 4 hours south of Lima in the Sechura desert, for about a month. Needless to say, a total change: in climate, people, food, work responsibilities, and the list goes on. More to come on that soon. First I wanted to put up my last thoughts on my time in Chalaco. Many volunteers can't help but fall in love with their sites, the good and the bad, and realize it only after they leave. I am one of them. Fortunately I'm still in-country and plan to go back this year after the rainy season. Below are my last thoughts for a while on that wonderful place, as I transition into my new life here.

I´m gonna miss the sky in May. In other places you look up at the clouds; here, you are literally inside them. There are afternoons when the fog is so thick you can´t see 15 feet ahead of you. And then in an instant it clears and the landscape reemerges, the mist following the contours of the hills, rising and plunging and swirling so fast it doesn’t look real. In May, when the rains are finally letting up and the nights turn clear and chilly, there are some spectacular sunsets. And in Chalaco you don´t look out at the sunset like in other places – you´re actually part of it. I´m gonna miss walking home in the evening with the sunset all around like a bright, shifting blanket – pinks and oranges and colors that there aren´t any words for. When you look out to the west and see the setting sun reflected in the clouds, and then turn around and see the same colors there behind you, and to your left and right and in every direction patches of sun swirled with fog and baby blue, and the whole thing shifting and changing every second. You want to take a million pictures, but you know you could never do it justice.

I´m gonna miss laying on my back in front of our house with my two little brothers after dinner, watching the night sky overhead and counting shooting stars. One night towards the end of May, without any warning and after months of rain, the stars just come exploding out of the sky, and you can´t believe they could ever have brighter anywhere, ever before. I´m gonna miss telling them the stories of the constellations, of how Orion went hunting with his dogs Canis Major and Canis Minor, and he got bit by a scorpion, which is why Scorpio appears in the east just as Orion disappears in the west. Or how you can use the Southern Cross and the Big Dipper to find your way home if you get lost. And trying to explain that every one of the millions of stars is like the sun, with planets around it, and how it takes years for their light to reach us, and how the universe is so incredibly huge that we can´t even begin to comprehend it.

I´m gonna miss Beto, my host-father´s brother who lives next door and is easily my best friend here, though I don´t know if he realizes it. I´m gonna miss running in the clear, crisp mornings with him. The man runs like an antelope, and I just try to keep up. I´ve been running a few times a week since I got here almost two years ago, down the road a ways and then back. And Beto comes along once in a while when he doesn´t have to be out in the fields early, and just kicks my ass like he´s been training for it his whole life. I´m gonna miss watching “The High Chaparral” with him weekday nights at 7 while we eat dinner, and talking about the wild west, neither of us hiding the fact that we sincerely want to be cowboys when we grow up (he’s gotta be approaching 40 by now). I´m gonna miss the way he can appear to take nothing in life seriously, but underneath it all still be such a dead-serious person when you get right down to it: family and friends and that’s it. I´m gonna miss talking to him about nothing, and everything.

I´m gonna miss teaching guitar to my oldest host brother Nestor, playing the same four chords from “Wonderwall” by Oasis on repeat for what seems like hours on two slightly out-of-tune guitars, but not complaining because I remember how goddamn cool it is when you first start playing songs that you´ve heard on the radio and MTV. I´m gonna miss helping him with his English homework, knowing full well that he´ll trade it with his friends for other homework he can copy from them, and not objecting because I know that they´re doing way more than most of their peers, and at least they´re learning to figure out solutions to the nonsense life throws at them. Like English homework without being taught any real English.

I´m gonna miss lying to my host-parents about my brother Adrian´s whereabouts, and his aspirations to be a master chef, despite only knowing how to make banana smoothies and chocolate cake, and not seeing any reason to learn anything more. And betting with him on any sporting event that happens to be on TV, constantly owing each other soles – debts which inevitably become erased when you go double-or-nothing (“doble o nada!”) enough times in a row, and which we both know wouldn´t be paid anyway.

I´m gonna miss the little kids in town who shout “Mateo!” every time I walk past. Sometimes they´ll yell “Cuando?,” referring to when I´m going to teach them English again, but it´s been so long that they don´t even know what they´re asking about anymore. I´m gonna miss the little old lady – barefoot, hunched, smiling – who says “Tarde de Dios!” rather than “Buenas Tardes” like everyone else. I´m gonna miss the sweet “vainilla” bread that my friends the Burres make in their bakery, which they sell in bags of 10 for a sol (I´ve calculated I will have eaten over 3,000 of them by the time I leave.) I´m gonna miss the fruits and vegetables that come and go with the seasons: mangos, avocados, sweet corn, and more, all of which are around for only a month or two at a time. Eating that way makes you feel very connected to the land. I´m gonna miss drinking calentado, hot cañazo moonshine mixed with lemon and sugar and cinnamon, on cold nights with the guys sitting out in the street, talking about the weather or their kids or asking me for the millionth time what we drink in the States and how it compares. I´m gonna miss the feeling of calm I get when I´ve been at site for a month or more, and really settle into the pace of life here, where you aren´t rushed or anxious about not getting something done today, because if the rest of the town is just fine putting it off til tomorrow, why shouldn´t you be?

And God, I am going to miss Naranjo. That little mountain village has been my adoptive home during the last several months, and I probably spent as many nights there camped out in the Health Post as I did in my bed back in Chalaco. The people took me in, accepted me, took care of me, laughed with me, confided in me, offered me so much kindness that was exhausting at times. I’m gonna miss being invited to eat at every single house I visit, even if it’s 15 or more in a day. Pan-toasted wheat tortillas so thick they’re more like bagels than bread, tamales made with corn growing not ten yards from where you sit, and fresh cheese and over-sweetened coffee with almost every meal. I’m gonna miss the feeling that as I hike out here, it’s like I’m taking a step back in time about a hundred years, right onto the scene of a García Marquez novel, where the line between the real and the made-up really does blur. The wood smoke rising from tin-metal roofs of snug adobe homes, the tinny huayno songs playing all day on ubiquitous radios, the smiling, toothless, gray-haired old ladies who talk about the Bible as if it happened yesterday, and the constant backdrop of crying babies, screaming kids, crowing roosters, barking dogs, and rambunctious pigs that all blends together and then gives way to a million crickets after the sun sets. The evenings, too, I will miss. It’s one thing to be in a village all day working and then return home at night, but when you end the day there you really get a sense of the calm that pervades village life. It is a deep, therapeutic calm. In a lot of ways, it’s easy to see how people can regularly live to be 100 in Naranjo. As for me, if I’m lucky enough to be around that long, I know I won’t be working the fields and chopping firewood and dancing all night right up until the day I pass on. Those abilities can’t be absorbed in a year, they are developed over a lifetime in the campo. Which all told, would not be a bad way to spend one.