Back in the day when things were cool.
-Erykah Badu

Oh my god. Its been so long that it is absolutely absurd. There is no excuse, just an explanation. Its actually been really busy. Seriously. Let’s see, it all started back around Easter, Semana Santa as they call it down here in the dirty south. We had four days free from Peace Corps duty and so we took an extra day on either side of the four days and took our first extended journey in Peru, or S. America for that matter. We went to a place called Chachapoyas – high in the mountains that border the Utcubamba River Valley in Northern Central Peru – the department of Amazonas. The trip started with a 13 hour, overnight bus ride on a not-very-comfortable bus. It was long and uncomfortable. At some point during the night we stopped for over an hour at a river crossing and then just crossed the river anyway. What could have happened to the river level during that hour was not made clear to the passengers, but when we finally crossed it was marvelous. Angela and I had been genuinely worried that the rainy season would ruin our trip out to Chachapoyas – no one wanted to go with us and that is worrisome. Only two of our friends were brave enough to meet us out there, and I could easily call their judgment into question. We made it there tired and dazed after a morning drive through the most surreal landscape I have ever seen. I had never seen anything that one could call “the jungle” before that morning, and it blew my mind. On either side of the raging, brown Utcubamba River rose sheer cliff faces higher than I could see out of the bus windows. Aside from the river, not a speck of the scenery was any color other than green. The flora ranged from large, sprawling, moss-covered giants to tiny ferns, and it seemed unaware that it was growing on a sheer cliff face. It was unreal – I kept saying to Angela that I had never seen anything like this before. The sleep deprivation, anxiety, hunger, and motion sickness added to the surreal nature of the trip. Great stuff. The first day we just recovered and then met up with our two friends. It was a great trip – Chachapoyas is a traveler’s dream (I refuse to call myself a tourist, though I was playing the part of one). It appeared on the tourist map only five years ago, is still fairly difficult to access and located safely in the extreme north far from the Panamerican Highway and the heavily-traveled southern reaches of Peru, is completely surrounded in all directions with relatively unaltered nature and ruins from pre-Incan cultures, etc. It has developed the small amount of luxuries necessary to make it fun for adventurous visitors – good, cheap hostels and a couple of honest, locally-run, sustainable guide agencies. It is a nice place, to say the least. For 6 days, we hung-out, were serenaded quite loudly by a boisterous local guide, took warm showers, slept underneath blankets happily, sat and listened to the rain, hiked through primary forest and camped in a chicken shack, ate Peruvian/vegetarian food, spent an hour or two in an herbal sauna, saw a gigantic waterfall and lots of other, smaller ones, went to an ancient mountaintop fortress in pouring rain, almost died on a crazy combi ride to and from said fortress, and generally lived it up on the cheap. And to top it all off, we found a bus back to Chiclayo that was much nicer and cost only a few soles more, so the trip back wasn’t nearly as shitty. Good times.
(That’s for you, Jodie) Let’s see, after that, Angela started having a much better time here in site (not because of the trip but due to some other stuff). Work started picking up and Angela and the community began to genuinely warm up to us. This hasn’t made working here any easier, as the community is still fairly unorganized, but it has made us feel a lot better, which makes everything easier. Angela has been working in some of the local schools, I started a computer class, and we are starting an English class, among other things. Not anything you would call a project yet, but that isn’t really realistic in our site at this point. We are looking at doing outreach activities possibly indefinitely, but hopefully with the intention of creating a space in which to create a group strong enough and motivated enough to create a shared vision and decide to take steps toward it. This made my trip back to the States a little bit harder, as a common question most people felt (logically) compelled to ask me was “So . . . what are you doing down there?” It was difficult to walk the line between answering that question adequately enough to make me feel okay with myself and spouting off development jargon containing the words “process-based” and “sustainability.” Mostly, I think I succeeded in making people feel like I didn’t really know what I was doing down here, but that it was certainly not bad. And that is probably somewhere closer to the truth.
Oh yeah, so I went to the States. Last summer during our wedding celebration, Chris/Twink asked me to be the best man for his wedding in May. In my state of natural inebriation of all sorts, I said of course I would be and that I would do whatever it takes to get there in May. Chris was moved. Later, I realized that I was in Peru and that May was coming up rather quickly and somehow my mutual fund wasn’t producing the gains that my accountant had assured me it would and that round trip tickets to the States were not to be had cheaply. I called Twink to beat a tail-tucked retreat from said promise and was brought back to the reality of having good friends. Twink offered to help me out with the ticket home and so I went for it. To be honest, the timing was a little off. Things in site were going really well at that time but I had been out of site a lot in the weeks before. What I really needed was some time to sit down and just hang out in my site and get some work done. But I can’t complain; it was their day. So I took a long trip through Ecuador to fly home (the tickets were half the price) and spent some amazing time relaxing in DFW with my mom and “Gentle” Ben “Mexican Mafia” Perez before taking a road trip to Austin through Ft Worth with the Guatemalan Refuge Crew of Stimmel, Frank, and Babas (stimmel’s first true life companion - an incredibly intelligent and well-mannered German Shepard puppy). Still too beautiful for this world, Frank was, in a word, svelt. The kid has lost the baby fat but not the baby face. Stimmel, too, looked svelt, but more in the way a cancer patient is svelt. The kid has not been eating well. But all was well, I am just used to the old, pumped up version of Stimmel, not the new, world-weary, cardiovascular workout Stimmel. I love them both, luckily. After a night trading stories about the world outside of the US, we made out way to Austin and participated in an extended wedding celebration that began at Temple’s House on Thursday evening and ended sometime Monday morning as I drive back to Dallas in the truck that I was supposed to leave at Temple’s to rest for a year or two. Along the way I got the chance to spend a lovely Mother’s Day with my mother (in law) and brother (in law) and dog (the face biter herself, Lily is doing great). Such is life. Great wedding, great friends, and, ironically, I somehow received a surprise stomach illness in Austin much worse than any I have experienced in Peru. Or at least on par. My mom assured me that no USA cuisine could possibly have done it to me, but I knew that the lack of bacteria and level of cleanliness and sanitation really pissed off the smaller forms of life that are inside of me. I found out from various people that it is not uncommon to get sick upon returning to the States from Peru. Is it even worth the effort to ask why? On Tuesday afternoon, I began a long trip back to site through Ecuador. My diarrhea luckily subsided enough to make the hour-long delay on the Houston tarmac in the midst of a thunderstorm and an Ecuadorian teenage folk dance group coming back from their first trip to the States mildly enjoyable. Back in the developing world, things were just as I had left them and that brought me instant comfort. Seeing Angela again after what was surely our longest time apart since getting married and apparently becoming completely co-dependent upon each other ended the stress for good. The difficulties of the stressful trip home were overcome by the happiness of seeing friends and family and returning to a place that I truly felt happy to be going back to (and not just cause my wife was there). I cannot say what a good feeling it was to not feel bad upon leaving the States. Sure, the food was good and I love my friends and family, but coming back felt much more comfortable than going.
Upon returning, Angela and I almost immediately went to a workshop in Cajamarca with two community members. It was an intense, 3-day workshop on project design and planning. Amazing stuff. The community members loved it, we loved it, and I got a cold. Finally, the almost blessed first 8 months of (almost) not being ill have ended for me. Whatever. The workshop was great and while we were there our community was beginning work on expanding the water system from a system of 16 community spigots to a water pipe into each individual home. Two days ago, our family and ourselves received water right into the kitchen of the home for the first time . . .ever, I guess. Quite an amazing thing to see. The moment passed in our home as most incredible moments do in Peru, with a lot of silent staring and a sigh. Its crazy how people here can react to the most amazing things with such lackluster amounts of shock and awe. I was pretty stoked. Regardless, we have a spigot in our kitchen now and water comes out of it for an hour or so every morning. I’ll post a picture of it soon. Development, I have known you.
I am almost finished finalizing my diagnostic of Tecapa so that I can stop sitting at a computer for large parts of the day. As I said, we are attempting to start some stuff locally and are much busier than we have ever been. It is not any easier, but things are better. The community has really taken us in, and the time Angela spent here “alone” in the community was incredible for her relationships here. Good stuff continues and challenges are changing everyday, though never seeming to exit the stage as we ask them to. While I have been neglecting the blog, I have not been forgetting to post pictures on facebook. For those of you that don’t have facebook, I will give you access to the pics there as soon as possible. It is a process, though, and I will do it the next time I have some time to kill in front of a computer. Angela and I bought a hip new camera, though, so the pics should get a whole lot better quickly. Apologies for neglecting my duties as a blogger, though it is obvious that someone else neglected her duties, as well. I won’t mention names. If anyone is still reading this, thank you. Much love. Its freaking June, 2007. Unbelievable. Completely absurd. Shout out to Sean – miss you, blood brother and I still haven’t gotten that CD of music. I’m beginning to think you lied to me.

Patty