Living it out...
It appears, after speaking with my family the other day that I have taken for granted other’s awareness of how I’m living. Perhaps that is because some of my closer friends when I was in DC were former Peace Corps or individuals who have traveled a bit. Or it might be that my fellow volunteers share similar circumstances and I’ve been here so long that I forget what it’s like to live in the States. Perhaps when people think of Peru they think of llamas (the pic) or Machu Picchu or the exotic Amazon.
Hot water?…nope! In fact, the water here comes down from the glaciers or melting snow, so it is freezing. My dad asked me if I shower everyday…my response was a laugh. The longest I’ve gone without showering is two weeks. Luckily, in the town near me we can find warm, sometimes hot showers, so about every two weeks or so, I’ll go stay the night. But, usually, I’ll take a shower here once a week…only when the day is at its warmest and I usually use my big pan to heat up water and bring it in the shower with me. The entire time I fantasize about hot tubs. Controlling your breathing is really important.
No tv, no raido, no internet.
One of the reasons people get so drunk around here is because I don’t think there is not much else to do that they can afford. Hence, they drink a lot and talk about the same things everyday. Mainly, sex. There is a group of guys that hang out on ‘the corner’, and every time I go and hang out with them, it’s the same conversation. Sometimes they ask me about differences between Peru and the US. Or how much my shoes cost, or my watch, or my camera, or my jacket. Then its back to making jokes about sex…with an interruption to say something crude to the girl that walks by.
“The world was simple – stars in the darkness. Whether it was 1947 B.C. or A.D. suddenly became of no significance. We lived, and that we felt with alert intensity. We realized that life had been full for men before the technical age also – in fact, fuller and richer in many ways than the life of modern man. Time and evolution somehow ceased to exist; all that was real and mattered were the same today as they had always been and would always be. We were swallowed up in the absolute common measure of history – endless unbroken darkness under a swarm of stars.” Kon-Tiki
Love,
Jake