Why yes, I am going insane; An update on my life in Peace Corps

Hello, hello,  hello!

The lack of communication on my blog is just embarrassing, especially since my days left as a PCV are numbered. That's right, pretty soon this blog will become nothing more than stories from a time in the past when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer, because ladies and gentlemen, I have been to my Close of Service conference and chosen my final day.

I am COS'ing on July 24th, putting me back on US soil for the first time in 2+ years on July 25th.

I currently have 73 days left in Peru.

If there were words, or a meme, or some stupid GIF I could post to express the chest crushing, completely contradictory and complex feelings I have about this, I would post it. But there aren't, so instead I'll just continue on both feeling excited to see family and friends, and utterly depressed and panicky about leaving Peru behind.

As promised, here is a quick update on what I've been up to recently:

The Foot Growth
So, this is kind of a long story, but Imma make it real short: I had this weird growth on my foot called a "granuloma" which is defined as being "a tiny collection of immune cells known as macrophages..[which] form when the immune system attempts to wall off substances that it perceives as foreign but is unable to eliminate" - Wikipedia
So, I had this weird growth on my foot which started because I went digging for something (a bug? a splinter? a piece of glass?) in my foot with a knife. Then it never healed and got all weird looking. I went to the doctor and they had to cut it out, stitch me up, and I wasn't allowed to walk really (but I did with a cane), and I missed my last vacation as a PCV. I'd put pictures up, but you really don't want to see that.

It rained, a lot. 
My town can't handle rain. We're all dirt streets and desert and despite the fact that it rains every summer, we're still not prepared for it. There were a lot of mosquitos during this time, and cases of dengue raised. 

Nicole visited!
When I first got to Lambayeque I think I would've floundered a whole lot more than I did if it hadn't been for my PCVL, Nicole. She finished her four year service (yeah, FOUR YEARS) last July and it was terribly sad to not have her around. She came to visit for Semana Santa and I was able to spend some time with her in her old site (now Zack's site). Miss you sister!

Peace Corps Prom!
I love my dear sweet department of Lambayeque, and the reason I love it is because the volunteers who serve here are awesome, dedicated, and inspiring. They are also very fun to be around, and we had our first-ever department prom, which included rented dresses, and voting for prom king, queen and best dressed.

US Embassy English Teaching Workshop in Lima
My host mom is an English teacher for the high school, so when there was an opportunity to attend a workshop held by US Embassy English instructors in Lima, I signed her up. My host mom is great with the "book smarts" of English, pretty much having perfect grammar and a vast knowledge of vocabulary, but she never practices actually speaking. All of her instructors in Peru have been Peruvians, and even their pronunciation isn't great. Speaking with natives and practicing conversational English isn't something she gets a lot of opportunities to do. You'd think with me living in the house that wouldn't be a problem, but apparently I'm really hard to understand and she often feels too embarrassed to try. However when we went to the workshop in Lima she did great! She was speaking very well and we learned a lot of awesome games and ways to introduce topics to students to get them interested and more involved in their language learning. It was a great week and I'm glad I got to spend it with my host mom.

COS Conference
COS, or Close of Service, is a time for all of us from the same training group (Peru 17!) to get together to talk about what comes next; finishing things up in site, preparing to say goodbye to all of the people and places that have become so important to us over the past two years, and get ready for returning home. It was so good to see everyone in the same place at once and to look back over the past two years and how much we've all grown. And to say the least, it was stressful to think about all of this coming to an end. 

During our Swearing In Ceremony Chris, Faith, Zack, and Jon all played "El Condor Pasa," so it was only right that things should come full circle for our COS conference

Receiving my Peace Corps Completion certificate from my APCD

My pin! Peace Corps Peru

My Town Anniversary
After an emotional week of saying goodbye to friends, I came straight back to site for anniversary festivities. In Peru you don't just celebrate the anniversary of a town with a single day, oh no. It is at least a week, if not 10 days. So there was a lot going on every day, like music, dancing, a mass civil matrimony where 22 couples got married, various contests, and Zack came to my site and helped me put on a "ginkana" which is like corny games you play with kids on the 4th of July.

Mass Civil Matrimony

The folklorica band Zack plays with came to perform in my town

settin down the rhythm

one of the little devils from a typical dance

the "desfile" or march

What's to come?
Well, with only 2 1/2 months left there isn't a lot of time to do much, but that doesn't mean I won't try! I am restarting my Health Promoters group so that we can get more sex education classes in the high school. I'm also hopefully starting vocational orientation classes with the older students. Next weekend is our highly anticipated annual all-girls leadership camp, ALMA, and in 6 weeks we have our all-boys leadership camp, VALOR. 

We actually haven't been fully funded for VALOR yet, so, shameless plug, please help support our camp! This is your opportunity to help us directly with a projects, and this will be my last camp as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Without all the funding we won't be able to have the camp, and this is an incredible opportunity for boys from PCV communities to learn about leadership, communication, vocational orientation, gender and equality, sex education, y mucho mucho mas! Please click on the link to get to our funding website, which is a safe site (and everything is tax deductible!) Camp Valor Lambayeque 2013

The next couple months are going to be pretty crazy, filled with a lot of emotions and hopefully good times. I will take more time later to delve into stuff like that, but this update will have to do as I already have to get back out the door to continue with work and preparing for the weeks to come.

Much love!

Memories, mammaries, and diarrhea; A guest blog from my BFF Becky

Hello readers of Amanda's blog! You probably don't know me. Mostly because I don't blog, I'm not in the Peace Corp, and I'm not Amanda…whose blog this belongs to. BUT I recently went to visit Amanda all the way from Seattle, Washington where I live, work, and play a whole bunch. Amanda asked me to write a little diddy about our adventure. Despite my writing skills being less than a fifth graders, I agreed. Because I love her.

I guess i should probably give you an idea about how I even came to Peru to visit Amanda in the first place. 

Amanda and I grew up in a town called Challis, population 909, in the middle of nowhere Idaho. Like the most middle of nowhere you could probably imagine. We met on our first day of pre-school. Being such a small town, best friends for life aren't easy to come by, but Amanda and I managed to work it out. We grew up together, went to college together, lived together, and shared everything. Like so much, you don't even WANT to know the details. So I'll spare you. Just get the idea that this girl has been my best friend and soulmate since we were wee. So when Amanda decided to join the Peace Corp, I figured I'd be a total dummy to not go visit her wherever she was.

Now…ONTO THE VACATION.

While I was in Peru, I bought a small notebook and made bullet points about each of the towns that we went to or just about my observations in Peru in general. It was so vastly different than any place I had ever been that I figured it warranted its own notebook. I'll try my best to regurgitate the trip in a nutshell and highlight the details from my notebook.

[side note from Amanda: All of the following pictures are taken by Becky! She did a great job of taking photos I always want to, or forget to take.]

Lima! 

Amanda picked me up at the airport late at night and we were both pretty tired, so we just went straight to the hostel. We walked around the city the next day and it was beautiful, smoggy, and interesting. Here are a few of the details:

• Cats LIVE IN THE PARK. A ton of them. So many that there is a sign asking people to no longer dump their cats in the park. 

• Granadilla: the grossest looking fruit you'll ever see in your life. You crack a plum-size nut looking fruit open and expose the seeds that you eat. And those seeds look EXACTLY like bug larvae. Amanda loves this fruit. I tried it, because I think it's an important part of the culture to try foods, but I did not love it. 

• Bus rides where you LAY DOWN ALL THE WAY. Peru has a pretty great bus system. It's how people get around the country. They're big ol' double decker buses and for the right prices, you can get yourself a super relaxing twelve hour bus ride in a comfortable seat that completely reclines. This is what we took to get to…

Chiclayo!

Chiclayo is Amanda's regional capitol and is only about forty minutes from her site and has THE BEACH. I mean, I get it, Peru is a coastal country. Duh. But when I think of beach vacations, I think tourists. The beach in Chiclayo is not full of that. Not full of tourists (except for me) and it was AWESOME.

• Pacai: another weird fruit thing where you peel back the outside and eat the weird seeds on the inside. But this one was way better. And you don't actually eat the seeds, you eat this fluffy white encasing that surrounds the seeds. Tasty and waaaay better texture than granadilla.

• Bodoque: this popsicle in a plastic bag, usually with milk, and usually interesting fruit flavors. DELISH.
• *also let me just add here about how SWEET EVERYTHING in Peru is. Especially the drinks. People don't drink bottled water much (you can't drink water from taps, so families boil it in their homes if they need hydration) so if you have to buy something, why not buy something with a little zest!? Lika Inca Kola, Peru's favorite neon yellow soda that tastes like bubble gum and will send you into diabetic shock in less than sixteen ounces. I'm more of a salty over sweet gal, so you can imagine how tough snacking in Peru was for me. Amanda's addiction to sugar (as it's a huge comfort food for her) is also entertaining. But that would be a whole different blog.*

• Ceviche! One of Amanda's favorite thing to eat in Peru. She forgot to tell me that it was just warm sliced raw fish in lime juice. Taste is great, texture is something to get used to. 

• Combis. Not sure if I'm spelling it it right, but they're these very convenient little buses that get you through town for super cheap. Also, the way people drive in Peru is terrifying.

• The market where people buy all their goods. THIS WAS AMAZING. A huge open air market that snaked its way around a couple city blocks. It was covered with blue tarps and was a maze on the inside. You can get everything you need at the this market from your voodoo dolls and shaman herbs to your pork for the evening dinner to party supplies. What I liked most about this market is that it's all local vendors and an integral part of the community. It brings people together and it helps people support one another.

• Cuyes. No, I did not eat cuy while I was in Peru at all. But from our hostel, we could see cages and cages of cuyes being raised for food on one of the roofs of the building next to us. 

• Sleepy people. Amanda, her friend Zack, and myself had a conversation about how sleepy people in Peru seemed to be. They fall asleep on buses and combis pretty quickly and easily. We hypothesized it has to do with the heat, the amount of carbohydrates consumed (rice AND potatoes with every meal) and the amount of MSG used in food. Regardless, people are sleepy in Peru.

Amanda's site!

Amanda's host site is a little town with about 4,000 people south of Chiclayo in what they call the campo. Which what I gathered, roughly translates to the farm country kind of area on the coast. When we arrived it was about a million degrees and the power was out. This sent me to the comfort of the cement floor in Amanda's bedroom. Not like it really matters. There is no air conditioning in Peru. Unless you're a department store or something fancy like that. Or Starbucks. Starbucks will always have air conditioning.

• Piter! He's the dog of Amanda's host uncle. She takes him for long walks as he's just a puppy and needs to run around. He lives in the back of Amanda's host uncle's house with the cocks he raises for cock fighting. Yeah, that's a thing in Peru too. Amanda says she still hasn't quite acclimated to that part of the culture. 
  
• The cemetery. Every time I go to a Latin American country, I HAVE to visit the cemetery. Their attitudes and rituals toward death are so much more progressive and healthier than ours, in my humble opinion anyway. And the effort that they put toward loved ones tombs to make them beautiful is AMAZING. And fortunately for me, this is where Amanda takes Piter on walks so he can run around like crazy.
  
  
• Skulls! Some of the tombs at the cemetery were broken open, just from weather and wear, I'm sure, but we kind of poked our heads in some and saw real life skulls. Which is terrifying. I hopefully didn't catch any bad juju while I was sticking my nose in there.

• Mango bread. Amanda and I made mango bread one day using gluten free flour (Amanda can't eat the glutens) and it may have been the most delicious thing I've ever consumed in my life. 

• Mango maggots. I was about halfway through mauing down on a delicious mango that Amanda had so generously chopped up for me one morning when I realized there were little white maggots crawling in it. Oh well. Just some extra protein I guess.

• Chicken. Just so everyone knows, I have been a vegetarian since 2007. And I ate a metric shit ton of chicken in Peru. And from what I remember of chicken here, the chicken in Peru is FAR superior. Probably because they come from the market and were killed earlier in the day when the chicken here is typically from a gross factory farm and frozen on a truck for a significant amount of time before it ever makes it to a kitchen table. But I digress…

• The Zaña River. This little river is what keeps this desert region flourishing. And it has some killer sunsets. 
  

Huanchaco!

A little tourist town right on the beach about a 4 hour bus ride south of Amanda's site. It's BEAUTIFUL.

• Tourists. Are. Everywhere. After getting used to not being able to communicate with anyone and experiencing a legitimate Perivual lifestyle for a few days, it was definitely a shocker to roll into Huanchaco and hear English spoken all around me. It wasn't bad, but it took some readjusting.

• Turtles! Giant turtles (or tortoises?) lived in our hostel in the common area. So cute!

• The beach. The beach in Huanchaco is beautiful and one of its main draws for tourists and surfers. 

• Food poisoning. I didn't get to see as much as Huanchaco as much as I wanted due to violent food poisoning. That I got from VEGETARIAN PIZZA. Seriously. I was eating so much stuff that I wasn't used to and then the one thing that gets me is the same crap that I eat in the states. Amanda thinks that maybe the cheese they used on it was unpasteurized. That would make sense. 
• *while I'm thinking about it, you also can't really eat fruits or vegetables in Peru that have peels on them. Well, you can, but it's not recommended if you're only going to be visiting for a short period of time as it takes your body some time to get used to the amount of pesticides that are used on them and can make you sick. I would also like to add here that none of the vegetables on my vegetarian pizza had any peels on them. Which just adds insult to injury. 

Amanda and I got back on a night bus and headed back to Lima the night after food poisoning ravaged my body. Once back in Lima, I was still feeling pretty out of it and slept a bunch, so I won't add more details to that day.

But now I'm back home and have been home for awhile. Peru was so unreal and amazing and everything I wanted it to be. I would never be able to put everything I wanted down in a guest blog post, but hopefully this gives you a bit of an idea of what it's like to go hang with your bestie in a foreign country that she's been living in for almost two years. Which is where I'd like to end this whole blog. Amanda is doing some ridiculously awesome things in Peru. And she has grown so much in the past two years and I think proud is the only word I can use to describe how I feel about her. She is able to haggle with cabbies in perfect Spanish. She's able to navigate confusing cities and stick up for herself in tense situations. I'm so blown away by her adaptability to a foreign country that she's been able to call home for some time. Seriously. She is so inspiring and doing so great out there. Thanks Amanda for letting me come to see you on your adventure and letting me share this part of your life with you! I can't wait to see what other adventures we have up our sleeves together. But until then…I'll see you when you get home!

Thank you Becky for the great blog! You didn't think I would keep the title you jokingly suggested, did you? I loved having you visit to see my little corner of Peru, it meant a lot to me that you would come all this way. It was also great to see Peru through your eyes and have the chance to show you all I've been up to. We have known each other for almost our entire lives and been friends longer than most marriages last, and I can't express how nice it was to have my best friend there and just get it. I love you!

Sh*t my host dad says-- literally. Bonus Video

Zack came over to my house yesterday so that we could go ghost hunting (more on this later). We were sitting at the dinner table talking with my host dad, occasionally breaking off and talking in English on the side. We were busting a gut laughing when my host dad quickly picked up on one of the words* we were using.

*¡Warning! This video has some language in it, specifically one four-letter word, repeatedly.

Sh*t My Host Dad Says; Part Three

My host family have become a very important part of my Peace Corps service, and my host dad's wit and commentary both a blessing and a burden.

I've been posting funny quotes from my host dad on facebook and on here, but I haven't told you much about him. My host dad grew up here in my site with 12 brothers and sisters, a few of which have passed away over the years. He went to college and got a degree in physical education/sports. He mumbles like crazy and kind of sounds like Marlon Brando in the Godfather, and often my friends who visit have a hard time understanding him. He is a jack-of-all-trades and has so many different jobs and hobbies I can't keep track of them, from working in the school system, to building tombs in the cemetery, to bouncing at my host uncle's discoteca. He has 5 false teeth and occasionally he'll take them out and surprise me with a big grin. He is the definition of chismoso, a person that revels in gossip and other people's business, and when walking around town I occasionally run into him shooting the shit with neighbors. He has to put his two-cents in about everything. He's smart, a good father to his children, and a hard worker. He is an atypical Peruvian dad, as he takes a huge interest in his children's education, cleans the house, and has been known to make a meal for the family every now and then. We have a lot of interesting and fun conversations, and equally as many fights and disagreements, but it is always water under the bridge at the end of the day.

Many of you have told me how much you enjoy the posts about my host dad and feel that you like him and would love to meet him. It is nice to hear that our conversations can be translated into something that others can enjoy. Without further adieu, here is the third installation of some of the funnier shit my host dad says.

On appearances

Host dad: So, are you going to iron your sweater, or is it supposed to look all wrinkly and disheveled?

---

Host dad: ¡Que feo soy! [I am so ugly!]

Me: [stare blankly]

HD: All of my white hair, ugh, it’s so ugly. White hair is super ugly, huh?

Me: No, no, it’s not ugly.

HD: ¡Bien bandita eres! [You’re mischevious, lying, etc] You tell me, “No, no, you’re not ugly, it’s not ugly,” but you’re smiling the whole time you say it!

Proper eating

[Zack was over at my house and my host dad and host siblings were snacking on animal crackers, so they offered him some. He started eating them and my host dad interrupted him suddenly]

HD: Whoa, whoa, slow down! You’re doing it wrong! First you eat the head. Then you eat the feet. Then you eat the rest.

[Zack follows suit]

HD: See? Tastes better, doesn’t it?

---

Host dad: I want a tamal

Host mom: A tamal? At this hour?

HD: The stomach knows no hour.

H. Mom: You’re going to eat it cold?

HD: Hot or cold, the stomach doesn’t care. It’s all the same temperature when it reaches the stomach.

Me: There are other reasons to heat up your food, like texture, taste, and killing bacteria.

HD: All bacteria is killed the first time it’s cooked. The rest is psychological.

Me: And then more grows on it as it sits out. There are bacteria everywhere, and that’s why you have to heat your food up to a certain temperature to kill it.

[At that moment I took a sip of me tea, which was way too hot] “HOT!”

H. Mom: Did you burn yourself?

Me: Yeah, super hot.

H. Mom: That should kill all the bacteria!

An eye for an eye

HD: You know what I think they should do with criminals?

Me: What?

HD: Put them all on a boat, take them far out into the ocean, then put weights around their feet and throw them overboard.

Me: That's what the mob does.

HD: Well it's what the police should do. 

Me: That's a little extreme, don't you think?

HD: No. We should also cut the hands off of thieves.

Me: Uhmmm...

Health

After weeks of various different symptoms that never really added up to a cold, the flu, or anything that antibiotics could be prescribed for, the doctors suggested I give a stool sample to see if I have a parasite.

The last time I had a parasite (giardia) my host family all but didn’t believe it was possible. “Giardia doesn’t exist here,” my host mom said as she looked at me confused when I told her the diagnosis, which of course isn’t true.

So when I went in to give another stool sample I just told them I had a doctor’s appointment, because they tend to freak out when I’m sick. In fact, until I can demonstrate that I am completely healthy it is nonstop suggestions and ideas on what’s wrong with me and how I can fix it. After coming back from my regional capital, the questioning ensued.

Host Mom: And? How’d it go?

Me: Fine, I have to wait for the results.

Host Dad: How are you feeling? What’s wrong?

Me: I’m feeling fine right now.

HD: And your stomach? How is your stomach?

Me: Fine, it doesn’t hurt all the time, just sometimes

HD: Are you on your period?

Me: …No.

HD: You’re not? Because sometimes when women have stomach issues it’s because of her period.

Me: Well, it’s been going on for a long time, it’s not my period.

HD: I know what it is, you’re stressed. You’ve been very stressed lately and this is causing all your problems.

-A couple hours later-

HD: I know what’s wrong with you, you drink way too much coffee.

H.Mom: No, it’s not the coffee, the coffee just keeps you from sleeping, and she hasn’t been drinking coffee at night.

HD: I know what your problem is, you eat too much aji [hot sauce]. Too much aji can upset your stomach!

Me: I hardly ever eat aji.

HD: Yes you do!

Me: No, I swear, I barely ever eat it.

HD: Then whose aji is that in the fridge?

H.Mom: That’s mine.

HD: What in the world are you doing eating so much aji? Why do you need aji? Aji is only going to make you sick!

-One week later-

HD: What’s wrong with you? You seem down.

Me: I’m just not feeling very good.

HD: Still? What did the doctor say?

Me: That everything came back normal.

HD: You see? I told you, you’re fine, it’s just stress. Stress can cause stomach problems, headaches, fatigue and all of that.

Me: You’re probably right.

HD: I am right. And why are you stressed anyways? You don’t have kids, you eat 3 meals a day, your life is easy. Quit stressing out!

My host dad headed out for one of his many random jobs; night security at a well.

Carnaval! Throwing baby powder at each other at a party.

Host dad and I, covered in baby powder from carnaval craziness

On the important things in life

HD: You should buy a house here. Actually better yet, buy land then build your own house, that way you can have it how you like it.

Me: Okay, sounds good.

HD: But just get the basics; don’t go buying a bunch of fancy stuff, just what you need to live. The most important thing is food and to eat, am I right? Don’t go buying expensive furniture, expensive things. Some people buy couches and they get upset if it gets dirty and say, “Hey don’t put your feet on the couch!” But what happens if I have a couch I barely use? I keep it nice and clean and then I die, my wife remarries, and then some other guy is sitting on my couch. Better I enjoy it now and put my feet up. Because you can’t take it with you when you die, am I right? They give you a nice white shirt and then put a blanket over your legs because no one looks below the waist at someone in their coffin. Nope, you can’t take it with you.

---

HD: All of our children are weak and don’t know what it is to suffer, am I right? Before women used to have 10, 12 kids.

Me: Yeah…that’s a lot of kids.

HD: Now, women only have one and they don’t even want to push out their baby! They don’t even want to deal with pregnancy! Look at you, how old are you? You don’t have any kids, and why? Because you’re scared.

Me: Umm….it actually has to do with the fact that I’m not ready to support a child, nor am I in a position to take care of a child.

HD: How old are you, 24?

Me: 26

HD: Well you’re not getting any younger. When you finally get married and have kids, you take care of yourself, you and your husband. Neither of you should drink for at least 5 months. You don’t want your baby being born a drunk. You want your baby to be strong.

Me: Yeah, when the time comes.

HD: Well, don’t wait too long, cause you’re what? 23?

Me: I’m 26

HD: And your boyfriend?

Me: 26, the same.

HD: Well…just don’t wait too long.

Dating

Host dad: Kayla [my host mom's nickname] was so shy and quiet when she was young.

Me: Yeah?

HD: Yeah, she would blush and hide her face whenever I walked by her.

Me: How did you two meet?

HD: Here in town.

Me: You just both grew up here and knew each other?

HD: Yeah.

Me: So how did you start dating?

HD: She called me up one day and invited me over to her house for candy.

Host mom: [from the other room] LIAR!!

Aging

HD: Ugh, cebada is gross, am I right? It only tastes good cold, am I right?

[Cebada is a drink made out of barley. I can’t drink it since I’m gluten free]

Me: What about emoliente, the hot drink with cebada in it? What do you think of that? [Emoliente is often used to cure and prevent ailments]

HD: No. I’m old. My body is old, my organs are old, my heart is old, there is no reason for me to drink that. You? You’re young. You need to maintain your health. Me, I’m done. There’s no saving or maintaining any of this.

[my host dad is 54]

What I suspected all along…

HD: I like to talk and have conversations, but I also like to say the contrary of the other person. If everyone agrees in a conversation, it’s boring and short. You, you don’t always agree with me, and I like that, and our conversations are better and longer because of it.

Mi más sentido pésame

Cemeterio de San Francisco

My good friend Becky recently came to visit (Becky will talk more about the trip in her upcoming guest blog!), and we went on a lot of walks in my town, and I took her on Piter and my usual route out to the cemetery. Becky and I share a love for cemeteries, so it was fun to walk around and also share with her a part of my everyday. I showed her my host grandpa’s tomb and told her about the parties we often have around his tomb on the anniversary of his death, his birthday, and día de los muertos, and how the whole family will come together and take a day off of work to celebrate him and be together. It has been five years since my host grandpa’s passing, and in my almost-two years of service I have been to a handful of these celebrations and always enjoyed them. I never knew my host grandpa, but they are comforting and my host family speaks of him so fondly. When I told Becky about this we talked about how this is so different from things back home, but it seems in many ways better. It seems like a better way to grieve.

When I got back from my vacation with Becky (we went to a couple places out of my site), I arrived early on Sunday morning. I readied myself for a quiet day of unpacking, napping, and getting ready for the week when my host mom came into my room. She asked me to go with her to the house of her sister’s father-in-law because he had died. Whenever my host mom asks me to do something, I do it. I asked her what clothes would be appropriate, and despite feeling wracked from a 12-hour overnight bus and the temperature reaching somewhere in the 90º’s, I pulled out my black slacks and a nice button-up shirt. I hadn’t been to a wake or funeral in my town before but I had seen the processions walking by my house and walked by the groups of people sitting in chairs outside of the deceased’s home for days. I knew at the very least that this would be a long day.

I walked with my host mom and my host grandma a mere block away from my house to reach the wake. Within the short time it took us to arrive I already felt sweat on my brow and upper lip and my legs felt suffocated with the first time I’d worn pants in months. Outside of the home there were at least 50 people sitting in plastic lawn-chairs under a small temporary awning structure built to offer some cover from the sun. We quietly greeted everyone, some I knew, most I didn’t. As we went to enter the home my host mom held me back to tell me how to give my sympathies in Spanish. “Mi más sentido pésame,” she instructed me, a phrase that can loosely be translated as “feeling the weight” or the pain of those suffering the loss of their loved one, or being their to take the weight and pain. When I entered the house I saw why so many people were sitting outside, as the entire house was filled with mourners, and I was directed to a smaller room next to the main living area.

The room was filled with large and beautiful bouquets of flowers and the closest family members sat along the edges. My host grandma walked in before me so I just followed her lead and waited my turn to give sympathies to the widow and others. In the middle of the room was the casket, open, with a piece of glass laid over the top. I assume the glass has something to do with the embalming practices, as well as the customary two-days the family spends with the deceased in the home. In regular embalming practices the fluids are drained from the body and replaced with chemicals, and it is made sure that the eyes and mouth are shut. However, that is not always how it is done here. In this case, the deceased appeared to be at least partially embalmed, however his mouth was open and filled with cotton, as was his nose, and it appeared as though his eyes were sewn shut.

When it was my turn to give my sympathies, I hugged those sitting closest to the casket and said the words my host mom had told me to. They received my hugs and thanked me sincerely, and I made my exit as many more people had come in behind me. As I was leaving a woman stood over the casket and laid her head down on the glass and sobbed.  

Outside the crowd had grown larger. I was offered a seat right next to the door to the house and I settled in for what I knew would be two-hours of waiting until we moved on to the church. More and more people came and entered the house, returning outside to find a place to wait. Sweat ran down my back and soaked my shirt and I fought off falling asleep as the heat baked all of us in our nice clothes. There were murmurs of quiet conversation, weeping and whaling, and the people kept coming.

In my time in Peru I have been in so many situations that made me uncomfortable or that I felt awkward and unsure of myself. I have found myself in situations in which I had felt like an intruder on a private moment. I have wondered out loud, “what am I doing here?” And somehow at the wake of a person I hardly knew, hours in and not even halfway through its completion, I realized this wasn’t one of those moments. I realized that I no longer have those moments. While this person was a neighbor that I had passed on countless runs, I did not know him well, but I did not feel like I did not belong. It did not bother me to see him in his casket. The community had come together to bear the weight of the loss of a loved one, and I am now a part of that community.

When it came time to move on to the church, to carry the casket and the man out of his home for the last time, there were hundreds of people present. Being a small town the church is only a few blocks from anywhere, so the group walked slowly on to the church following a marching band.

The funeral continued with a mass at the Catholic Church (which was filled to the brim) for another two hours, and then followed by a procession to the cemetery. I handed kleenex to my host mom and host aunt as we exited the church and watched as people clung to the casket, kissing their hands and touching it, and cried as it was carried out. My host mom and host grandmother decided it would be okay to leave at this point although the ceremony would continue on for at least another two hours. 

We parted ways with the group heading to the cemetery and my host mom continued to cry and tell me how the funeral had reminded her of her father's. We stopped at a bodega on the way home and she bought us popsicles and we ate them in silence as we walked home.

It may seem strange to say, but in many ways the wake meant a lot to me. I’m glad my host mom invited me. It immediately put me side-by-side with people in my community and grounded me after returning from vacation, which can be difficult. It gave me an opportunity to participate in a part of life that I often stay away from. It allowed me to realize how much I’ve grown personally, and within my community as an honorary member. It showed me how much my host mom appreciates my presence, even in times of sadness.  In my first months of service I would not have been able to handle a wake or funeral, but I also wouldn’t have been invited.

There are many things about the small Peruvian community I live in that I have come to really appreciate. Yes, it is humble and still developing, but their interconnectedness as a community and willingness to bare the weight of others, to share the load, is one I admire and hope to emulate. Maybe Peruvians are less disconnected and separated from death because they don't have the privilege and opportunity to do so, but their customs are something I would never change. I am humbled and honored to become apart of it.