As The World Turns

"In the far and mighty West
Where the crimson sun seeks rest,
There's a growing splendid State that lies above,
On the breast of this great land;
Where the massive Rockies stand,
There's Wyoming young and strong, the State I love!"
-Wyoming State Song

Two days before 4th of July, Stan decided it would be a great idea to throw a bunch of at-risk teenagers (most of which had only ridden for one day of their lives) onto half-tame, barely trailer-trained mustang/arabian horses and put them all into the blistering hot Lander 4th of July Parade complete with hoards of children running amok and spraying fire hoses - yeeeeeehaw!! Being the thoughtful (*cough*: scared to death) and service-oriented person I am (*cough*: not insane), I look it upon myself to drive the truck with Stan so he would be able to come along and all the others could participate in the riding crazy horses in the city streets part.

On 4th of July, I got up at 5am - which was when everyone said they had wanted to get up - and spent the next hour and a half being a highly caffeinated human snooze button. We had to be at the parade - 30 minutes away - by 8:30am. Everyone started casually rolling out of bed at 6:30am and were outside to start trailering 11 horses by 7:30am. Using various tools (corral fence posts, large sticks, lead ropes, trailer doors, strong strapping men and one with a bunch of broken ribs) we finally trailered all the horses by 8:10am. Only two of the horses reared inside the trailer and tried bashing their brains in. We made it to the parade slightly late, but then again, nothing much was going on at that point, so we ended up with plenty of time to saddle horses, paint horses, and decorate the pickup truck with blankets, posters, and fancily dressed young Indian girls armed with giant bags of candy.

The parade was the biggest one I have ever seen! It took 2 hot, sweaty hours to make it down 10 city blocks, and man, they do parades differently in The Great West - everything here but particularly parenting out here is a huge contrast to Boulder, Colorado parenting/hovering. I'm pretty sure parents weren't even on the same block as their 2 and 3 year-olds as I spent most of my time peering out from blankets hanging over the window and windshield, dodging tiny children playing in the spray from the firetruck in front of us and viewing the 10-foot space between us and them as a mobile crosswalk. Apparently, to the horror of some of our riders, several ran right up to our horses thinking they were as tame and friendly as fairground ponies. The firefighters thought they were being merciful in the heat of the day by spraying their firehoses at the horses, but let me tell you, these horses typically spook when you start filling their water troughs up with a garden hose!

At the end of the day, everyone was hot, sweaty, and happy, the paint was running off of the horses, and the horses went onto the trailer much more readily than they had in the morning. 4th of July is quite a popular celebration out here - fireworks are available most of the year and isn't it precious how even the youngest of children hold them with their bare hands as they stand out in the middle of the dark streets in their own homemade fireworks arsenal, ahem, I mean, display?? That being said, we celebrated with a giant BBQ complete with steaks cooked on a charcoal grill that had been preheated in 1 minute flat with a giant blow torch - man, living where there are no laws, or at least no one to enforce them, totally rocks! The celebratory night ended with every square inch of Lander being lit up by giant, stadium-style fireworks!

Yeeeehaw!!

Wind River Reservation, Arapahoe - west central Wyoming - The Wind River Indian Reservation spans 2.2 million acres and is home to 2,500 Eastern Shoshone and more than 5,000 Northern Arapaho Indians. The Northern Arapaho were not originally given a reservation by the US Government, and instead had to find space on what was originally the Shoshone reservation. This was a big sacrifice and problem considering the Shoshone used to be everyone's enemy! The Arapaho had to petition the government to allow them to be able to live on the reservation, and so, this small space - probably only half of which is usable, which was originally only designated for one tribe, is now home to two tribes.

I am spending my summer living on the hot, dusty reservation at the home of my friend, Stanford Addison, a Northern Arapaho Indian who has a particularly novel and gentle approach to taming horses, and has also found a way of helping at-risk youth through working with horses. Stan is a lesson in courage and tenacity - besides the fact that he is not too far from the ripe old age of 50, living on an exceptionally poor reservation rife with alcoholism, drug abuse, and unemployment, and besides the fact that he has already outlived two sons, a few siblings, and several close friends, he was also injured in an accident nearly 30 years ago that rendered him quadriplegic. Through all of this, he has become a medicine man and recognized elder of his tribe, he has developed his horse taming method, and he has also opened his home to several foster children, and travels around the country speaking about his experiences. You can visit his website for more info, or you can come down and take a clinic!! http://www.stanaddison.com/ Or you can come down to keep me company! Please!! For the love of god!! Visit me...

Ahem. Anyway. I spend my nights in a tipi next to the corral. It is one of the few places that stays relatively cool, and for some reason, is also a spot that most of the kids who run amok here don't generally think to look for me, begging for entertainment, piggy back rides, and if all else fails, start calling me names (especially creative ones, like 'Tonya Dumb-butt') and wrestling with me in order to rouse my attention. Yes, being a tall, female white person, I am novel entertainment. Akin to an amusement ride.

I spend my days being a surrogate housewife and ranch hand to about 10 people living in a small mobile home - cook up breakfast, sweep up the floor, throw a load of laundry in, go for a walk before everyone gets up at the early hour of noon, feed and water the horses, lay up the tack to dry out, hang up the laundry, clean up the kitchen, put up with endless bad jokes and teasing, check business email, pick up mail, delegate chores, saddle up the horses, ride, nap in the tipi, entertain children, help new riders, put chicken in the oven for a 11pm dinner, feed the dogs, take a shower, go to bed by midnight. Every few days we have a sweat lodge ceremony which breaks up the monotony, and my favorite new thing to throw into the mix - a visit to the "neighborhood" coffee house (it's 20 miles away in Lander) with velvet couches, jazzy music, dark moody walls, wireless access, and tied for First Place for awesomeness is the rich espresso and the cute barista guy. I'm not so far from civilization afterall.

USA or Bust

Nothing like a good bit of international travel to revive dying patriotism.

I managed to get out of Cusco on a riot- and tear gas-free weekend, on an earlier in the day flight than originally planned, and had a riveting 12 hour wait in the Lima airport. After this and 2 hours waiting in the check-in line, Continental airlines offered a $500 travel voucher toward another flight in the future if I was willing to take a different, non-overbooked flight the following evening. If only they had asked me before the 12 hours of waiting around... One plane experienced a medical emergency and stressed out a flight attendant so much, she almost decked a little old lady that was concerned about being late for her connecting flight. When the lady asked if there was a separate line for US citizens in Customs, the flight attendant snapped, 'Ma'am, there is NOT a separate line, you will have to wait just like everyone else, who do you think you are, the United States does NOT discriminate, we are not prejudiced or racist!' As if the old lady had been calling the attendant racist. I thought they were both going to burst into tears. And yes, there was a separate line for US citizens... And not only that, horrors of all horrors, they also had me cut to the front of the line so I wouldn't be late for my own flight. 24 hours of travel and two luscious exit row seats later, I was back in the good ol' USA! Cuts, buts, and chicken butts!

Some things I have noticed since re-entry: everyone is so big!! My first layover was in Houston, and at first I thought it was just a Texas thing, all these strapping men looming over me, but it hit me in Seattle when I thought, 'Hey, these Seattle guys aren't normally *this* tall when I realized I had been living in munchkin-land for 4 months! Also, the toilet paper is bigger, wider, softer - and, if that wasn't miraculous enough, you can throw it right into the toilet!! Yippee for healthy sewer systems!

Now, Starbucks seems like (and always has been, I can admit) a luxury - good god, you could go grocery shopping in Peru for what you pay here for a fancy cup of coffee! The TVs switch channels a lot faster here, the computer keyboards have all their keys, tables aren't precariously leaning to one side, the salad you're eating is probably safe to eat, you can drink water from drinking fountains, and men don't leer at you (as much) on the sidewalks. I am enjoying driving again, and I like the fact that there aren't any Peruvian taxi drivers on the roads. But I do miss my favorite restaurant, Kukuli, with its stressed out but happy grandma who mistook me for a vegetarian one day and decided from there on out what I was getting for lunch each day for my $1.50 US. I miss that I could just walk to most of the stores I needed to get to (I miss Boulder for the same reason, but that is a different blog), I miss the idea that you can get a good tattoo for a lot less money (grandpa: notice I said IDEA), and I certainly miss my kids.

But I don't miss that it is summer down there, and today I took advantage of it still being winter in the Cascades and hit the slopes with grandpa for an absolutely perfect day of skiing! I am now an official substitute for a school district out here, and I think I start tomorrow.

Protesta!

So, the Cusqueñas aren't the most organized group of people in the whole world. They were supposed to have their big protest riot thing last week but they kept postponing it so that they could have more time to read about rules and get themselves organized. Unfortunately they organized on the day of my return trip home. Now. I realize that most people would probably kill to be able to say to their boss, 'There was a big protest and I can't get out of the country for three more days!' And be elated about spending three more days in Cusco. They also haven't lived here for over four months. They might not even care about spending another $300 on ticket changes and hostals and food.

By early afternoon, the internet said I still had a flight waiting for me. Because the protest was happening there weren't any taxis, which meant I had to strap on my giant backpack and tote my carry-on about 2 miles to the airport in the blistering sun and walk through crowds who were just standing around gaping and playing futbol instead of working. It is curious that for a people who don't earn much money that there are so many strikes and protests. I got as far as the far outside wall of the airport when I saw the police, who were threatening to hit 12 year-olds on bicycles who thought it was funny to ride their bikes close by. What no one realized was that the protest crowd was just around the corner and the police were trying to get everyone to go home. I had been sitting in the shade, hoping that because I got their really early, maybe if I just sat around and waited my flight would still be on. What I didn't know was my flight had already been cancelled and the airport was closed. Suddenly I heard a crowd of people shouting so I started walking back to the hostal in the opposite direction, one block later I heard pops which I soon discovered were bombs of tear gas. Now we were all walking in the same direction with scarves over our mouths. 20 sweaty minutes and 2 wobbly legs later, I was back at my hostal.

It took four hours before my airline here in Cusco was able to reschedule my flight, yes, not until the 24th, and not the US until the 25th. Fie, cruel world!! I have already said goodbye to EVERYONE which was traumatic enough the first time around so I don't want to do that again. So it is just me and my personal TV with cable and Girls of the Playboy Mansion, which besides being in English and makes me want to dye my hair platinum blonde, kinda of makes me want to barf. I treated myself to my favorite restaurant for dinner, which fortunately is only $1.50 US, a bottle of my favorite yogurt (I might have to turn to something stronger after my 3rd episode of the Girls), and I signed up for a day of rafting this weekend so I can get out and enjoy the countryside for less than $30 US. This country is good for some things.

When the Buzz is Over

Ahhhh child labor. There are some things I will and will not miss about Peru. I will miss the markets where you can buy an entire blender full of fresh juice made any way you like it for about $1 US made by a pleasantly plump mom-like lady. Actually, I will miss how far my dollar goes in general. I will miss the dogs running all over the city even if they are dirty and don't like people and sometimes like to chase after white people. I will miss my professors asking me to pick them raspberries from our very tall raspberry trellis at school. I will miss that every day is different and every day something unusual happens whether it's a riot with people burning tires (because somehow burning tires symbolizes that the people don't want a commercial company buying out Machu Picchu) or running into someone from Colorado with so many similarities it's scary. I will miss that the people here work damn hard and I never hear anyone complaining. I will miss the snazzy cafe with the cute waiters and good cappuchinos, although I guess we have those in the States. Now that I am living safely and securely in a hostal within the grounds of my project at the Clinica San Juan de Dios, I certainly don't miss the sounds of children getting hit and screaming next door to my previous house. I'm not really sure what kind of malicious mischief a 4 year-old can truly get into or for what a young teenaged girl needs to scream for an hour straight. Today I learned that domestic violence is tolerated unless a family member reports it - if you tell the police, and you're not family, they won't do anything. I also found out from a fellow volunteer at my project with the teenaged girls that he has taken two of them, after they have left the project to go back to living with their families, to go have abortions (which, surprise, are illegal here) after being raped by family members. I won't miss the dirty 3 and 4 year-olds coming into restaurants to sell me candy because they need to make money 'for the family', nor will I miss the dirty parents of these children who openly ask me for money for 'their children' with alcohol on their breaths. I won't miss hearing Peruvians talking about how wrong it is for white people to come into their city and try to help all the poor children. Although I was heartened today in my art studio project to hear that most of my girls dream of being lawyers and professionals so that they themselves can help the children. I won't miss my eyes being red from all the exhaust on the main drag in town (the air there is almost worse than in Paris). I won't miss having to purify all my drinking water. I won't miss that I have to buy my cheese in one store, meat in another, curry powder in another, and that the yogurt is never refrigerated, and often not the meat either for that matter. Although I have been blessed that I haven't been struck by a serious bout of Travelers diarrhea.

Today's art studio project was to create a collage of all the things you want in your life. Most of the girls chose pictures of cars and houses and children, some wanted to be chefs, others lawyers, a few wanted husbands but emphasized that the husbands and children need to wait until after they have their professions. One girl with a picture of a mosaic of Jesus in the center of her collage said she wants to see God in her heart.

Aguas Termales!

Cconnoc

The week before last Oscar and I headed out to the Cconoc Hot Springs for a day away from Cusco. Actually, I had no idea where I was heading just that it had the words aguas termales in it and that was sufficient. We rented a taxi and headed down into the warm, humid valley away from the cold mountains of Cusco. It was, by far, the most gorgeous trip of my stay here - rolling hills, green fields, tiny adobe houses, cows all over the road, sun setting...gorgeous. Our taxi also picked up 4 other people (yes, that is 7 people in one taxi) but we ended up being the odd-men out so to speak as no one else wanted to stop in Cconoc. So instead of being $5 US per person it was now $80 soles (which, in the grand scheme of things, is only $25-30 US but it is all relative - 80 soles always sounds like a lot, and more importantly, he was price gauging). Oscar and I found ourselves dropped off on a deserted road in the middle of nowhere forestland in pitch black country darkness. Our taxista pointed at a trail, the beginning of which we could just make out by the light of the brakes, and said he had to just follow that trail. And then he drove away. Fortunately both of us have a healthy sense of humor and flashlights too. We skidded our way down a very steep and twisty dirt trail surrounded by cacti and trees with thorns, and I think I nearly drove Oscar, who is already scared of things like mice and spiders, over the edge with my questions about bears and mountain lions living in the valleys and mountains of Peru. After a half-hour we finally saw some lights and came upon the hot springs. The next day I discovered that this little resort is right on the side of the biggest river I have ever seen outside of the Columbia. It is gorgeous, surrounded by mountains, exotic plants, warm sun, and my favorite, mosquito-like bugs. Although when they bit it didn't hurt and I thought I got away with murder the next day when they STILL didn't itch. Unfortunately, 10 days later, they are still driving me insane!! We left later that morning by walking back up the killer, this time with 90F heat and mosquitoes. I was happy to see a rock slab of a seat sitting in the shade and promptly laid down on it to revive myself. But then a bus came by, a saving grace I know not, except there wasn't any room on it which meant we had to stand most of the 3 hour bus ride back to Cusco. There is nothing like a giant bus filled with people who don't use deoderant or even shower that much in the height of a humid summer up and down twisty mountain roads when you are already exhausted and overheated and just finished all your water. Mind you, most of the people on the bus were young men, but it was a woman in her 50's who finally took pity on me and let me have her seat for awhile, and later when enough people left that I had my own seat, I promptly fell asleep for a nap and some kid outside threw a water balloon at my window which woke both me and my seat partner.

I spent Valentine's Day at an English pub, the same one I had Christmas dinner and Thanksgiving dinner at, and had a delicious cheese and, later, chocolate fondue. One American and two Irish male friends surprised us all by leaping into the restaurant in full-on homemade cupid/devil costumes complete with horns, wings, red underwear, red soccer socks, and shooting rubber bows and arrows. All three very single cupids were very happy to see 5 angels in full on white dresses and feathery white wings slugging back a few hard drinks at the bar. Ahhh amor!

¡Carnavales!

Somehow I had the crazy idea of actually going to the center of downtown Cusco on Sunday on the last, and biggest, day of Carnavales. When I arrived, everything was eerily calm, and I saw a crowd sitting on the cathedral steps preparing for... a parade, a festival, something...? I eyed the vendors selling plastic ponchos suspiciously especially considering that the cloud cover was steadily clearing. Fortunately after 4 months here I speak and understand Spanish passably well, and the man sitting next to me explained that yes, there was a parade, and yes, I was going to get wet. Ever prepared, I had my raincoat with me. Which at that point didn't help much with the 85F full-on 11,000ft altitude 10 point UV rating sun exposure. But in a way the gods were smiling on me and I was quickly surrounded and leaned upon by several standing 5 year-olds who blocked the sun fairly well. As did some old man with a parasol hovering over me.

During the seemingly endless stream of parade dancers, children sprayed water from backpack waterguns and foamy stuff like merengue all over the participants. When the parade ended, these weapons were quickly turned on the attendees, and as luck would have it, I standout particularly well in this country and therefore make an excellent target, even for 5 year-olds. It didn't end in the main center either, I walked back home and was blasted from passing taxis with at least 3 very heartily flung water balloons and a few squirts of spumo from the buses too. It was all in good fun, everyone laughed, I cooled off, and now the waterplay is finally over.

I also went to work that day, the dedicated volunteer that I am. Unbeknowst to me, there was a small Carnavales celebration for volunteers and employees (set up by volunteers and employees too). They set up an already cut, live medium-sized tree into the futbol field and dangling from it were all sorts of kitchen utensils and toys. At first I couldn't understand why some of the teenagers from the clinic balked at going near the tree. When I walked down, paper ribbon was wrapped around my body, someone grabbed my hand, and suddenly I was part of a dance circle complete with an falling-apart axe. My favorite are the dances with dangerous rusty weapons. In pairs we all took turns chopping at the tree, and when it fell, it was a free for all with all the presents attached. I really didn't need a kitchen strainer or plastic tupperware dish, so I only fought my way through for a whistle that I promptly gave to the crying 3 year-old who hadn't been allowed to participate further once the tree started cracking and leaning. Afterward was a feast of fried sausages and fried potatoes - never complete without mayonaise - how I have lost weight in this country I will never know, but I expect my body to grow by at least 2 sizes once my plane sets down in Seattle next week.