Rubble Work Site 12/19

Yesterday was an interesting day. While most people we rubble for are friendly, generous people that you feel the utmost warm-fuzzy-fuzzies working for, there can be exceptions... The man who´s former house we were clearing happened to be what I can only describe as a dirty old man, in its truest form. He began by describing to us his affinity for Coca. And how much of it he has taken over the years. Duly noted, and expected in this culture. ( I have sampled the Maté de Coca, and was surprised at its strength, most people say it isn´t as strong as coffee, but i was pretty tweaked after drinking it, luckily someone visited Arentina and brought back a glorious kilo of my beloved Yerba Maté so I could be craddling my Gourd as I write this... it has the great tendency of making you forget any feelings of sickness, but i digress) It was really only when the old man began to repeat ¨Pokey-Pokey con Gringa¨ that the perversity of this man became apparent. Now, being as physical as rubbling is, that does not mean that there are not women present in the least, one of our team leaders being among them. So as we tried to converse and pull meanings from this man we realized he was really only trying to reitereate over and over his desire to have sex with a white woman... How pleasant... In the best spanish I could muster I attempted to somehow express that it was improper for him to keep doing that. ¨Señor, por favor, es muy improper [pretty sure that´s spainglish] dices cuando las mujeres presente.¨ Yeah, anybody is welcome to correct me if they can. Well, that got him to stop talking, or he just decided he had better things to do. He proceeded to sit on a part of the foundation and pull out a porno mag. At first we were unsure if it was solely a porno mag, you see, down here its seems that the line between a newspaper and a smut rag is very ambiguous. They are sold side by side on the same ¨news stands¨and apparently some of them have a little news in them, I guess? After he read, uh, the article [no, I didn´t read that article, Yuri...] for a couple of minutes he begins to try to show us his favorite girl. ¨Mira, mira,¨ showing the girls at the site after the guys were obviously disinterested. All the while we are hard at work shovelling and hauling, don´t get me wrong, he was a nice man and he meant well, but he put the dirty in DIRTY old man. So remember that if your grandpa´s or uncle´s are letting loose with some crude jokes or comments this holiday season, it could quite possibly be worse...

Why would you do this?

Rumbling of large buses with a mixture of mototaxis (aka Tuk-Tuks) without mufflers, combined with the sauna like heat that begins promplty after the tent´s dirt-caked walls are hit by intense sun rays, undoubtedly wakes you up before seven o´clock every morning. After a breakfast of stale bread rolls and unflavored oat meal, the day starts. Huge piles of rubble, daunting at first sight, make you question whether once the sun has reached its peak if you´ll pass out from exhuastion or heat stroke. By 11:30, your arms are burning so much that it doesn´t seem even remotely possible that you´re going to be able to carry the wheel barrow that has been loaded beyond the brim with of chunks of brick and concrete. Your hair begins to almost take on the consistency of dreadlocks, as the flying dust and concrete forms in clumps to the sweat that has moistened all of your head, hardly keeping you and cooler it seems. Then, as you drive your shovel into the pile with what little strength you have left it, it hits something that does not feel like the usual contents of the previous 500 hundred shovels. You reach down to find and pull out a small book, dusting it off, you find that it is a small children´s book, abondoned during the chaos of 2 minute long Earthquake, as you begin to dig more of the artifacts, the realization dawns that this is not just a rubble pile that you are exhausting your body in an attempt to clear. Its somebody´s home, it was someone´s life shaken into shambles and buried in overwelming burden. At 12:30, a face to this unknown family reveals itself, beaming with happiness and gratitude. The have brought food and proudly offer it to you in exchange for the hope that you have brought them. They watch closely making sure everyone recieves their fill, loading each plate with more as soon as its empty. After a quick nap on the concrete you just spent the morning clearing off, you get back to work. By the day´s end you look around to see an unrecognizable empty lot, how could this possibly have been attained in just one day? Only throught the hard work of the people next to you can any feat such as this be accomplished. As you walk your tired body back, members from the community all show their apreciation, through smiles, holas or gracias, or drink or popsicle. Your company is comprised of people form around the world all similarly connected by the desire to help people in need as well as travel to exotic locales. Easily making the time to unwind from such arduous labor with drinks and jokes, one asks themselves why would anyone want to do this? Because its the best time you´ve ever had....

The Long Gratuitious Journey

The fear - anxiousnes of the trip that lies ahead reached a crescendo on the final and 3rd flight of the long, gratuitous tour of the continental United States. It was interesting, however, to observe the transition of each flight to more native spanish speakers, until the last flight, when even the flight crew began to speak spanish, and only translate to english when i would respond to with what I can characterize as the ¨Gringo Stare. ¨I´ve done it plenty of times now on this trip, except the people of Peru dont translate when you get confused, we just sit at a point of confusion and lack of ability to communicate that can get frustrating really fast.

The realization i must cope with now, that I really dont know beans or spanish, set in as the drink cart was working its way down the aisle. I had already displayed my fluentcy, or lack there of, with the dinner cart. So I was really trying to redeem myself here [to myself]. I began working out in my head, ´´Ok, orange juice, Naranjas... de juice? No, shit, its like 3 aisles away, What´s juice? Juego, no, Jugo?´´ I sat back and felt my face heat up and tingle as the moment came near. Its funny to think why trying to speak a language to a native speaker creates that physiological response. It´s like, if i really screw up, I´m sure its just cute and endearing rather than my fantasy that I´m butchering theri language with my white man´s arrogance and will promptly get thrown of the plane somewhere over Colombia...