Grandmother Peru

She sits in a classic National Geographic doorway, her vibrant dress and huge hat contrasting with the dark wrinkles that crisscross an ancient face. She´s always there, in front of a little tree, a perfect tree with a slender trunk and a box of green leaves cresting just above the rooftop of her low house. She´s always on a stool, just sitting, with dogs running around about her feet. She always waves. And smiles that toothless grin that puts the Colgate models to shame. I like this woman. I see her every time I go to the scary internet cafe. Which is frequently!

There are two things you can be guaranteed to see on every corner in Lima. One is a Chinese "Chifa" restaurant. The other is an internet cafe. I love it! I am, however, rather jealous about the fact that Lima is swimming in familiar luxuries. Maple syrup, Dominos pizza, Starbucks, Fridays, KFC, Cheetos, Cap´n Crunch, etc...foods I would pay almost any price for in Rio are regular occurences here. Maybe it´s God´s way of making up for the pollution and the ugly weather! And the mangey dogs and the trails of poop they leave on the streets and sidewalks...

If I was ever doubting my call to Brazil, a week in Lima has cemented my assurance that God called me to Rio, and not to any other field where WMF is working. I am homesick. Really, absolutely homesick. It´s such a strange feeling...and at the same time somehow comforting!

Lots of interesting things are happening in Rio in my absence...check out Ben´s blog...

We leave for the Bolivia retreat in one week, and I have got to buy some warmer clothes!

Being Clean

I finally figured out how to get hot water. And not electrocute myself. These are very important milestones in the past three days. In Brazil, we take at least two showers a day. Sometimes three. If I don't show up with wet hair to a date, a church service, whatever, people mutter...only "pigs" don't shower before going out. So it was quite a shock to me to have only taken TWO since Wednesday! It's just so cold (to me, anyhow) and I couldn't face the prospect of being any colder than I already was...but last night, I discovered that when only about 15 drops of water come out of the showerhead, it's near boiling. And if you turn the knob with a towel, you don't feel that little zinging buzz that lets you know the electric showerhead is working just fine.

I have this little house/room inside Esther and Samuel's compound. Compound is such a fun word, and completely inadequate to describe where I live. They have three rooms in their house: a living room, a bedroom with three beds, and a kitchen with no sink. Outside is the bathroom, a sink/laundry area, an open area for hanging laundry or hanging out, and then my little cabin, with its door and window and blue walls. My room is probably a third of the size of their house...

Just a thought: In America, in the West, we have all our kitchen appliances handy and convenient and efficient and we don't have to walk fifteen steps outside to fill up the coffee pot or wash the dishes. But I've never eaten so well in an American house. And the enviroment is hardly ever as relaxed. When the floor is dirt, no one cares if something gets spilled...I had to laugh to myself today as I was brushing my teeth in the sink, tying a little mirror to the laundry line to put on my makeup...thinking about when I was a kid, growing up in the woods of Indiana, building little huts and imagining life on the prairie, the Wild West...well, this isn't too far removed from those dreams! Except it's the city. In 2005. And I can wear makeup and not be a prostitute! Now, if it just wasn't cold...and there was a direct line to the internet from my room...

I'm rambling.

You could pray for me. My hands are like boxing gloves. Arthritis isn't liking Lima so well...

¿Bogota?

My head is pounding from too much coffee, too much chocolate, three hours of conversing in Portuguese with gentlemen from Brazil and Uruguay who shared my row on the plane, and of course, the effects of holding back tears and trying to forget a sleepless night of anxiety, gunshots, and a 5 am wakeup call. Are you lost yet?

I'm writing from a tiny booth in the Bogota airport, where internet is fairly cheap and I can waste a little of my seven hour layover thinking about things other than the fact that I know no Spanish, that I'm going to be gone from Brazil for 59 days, that I left my boyfriend at 6:30 am this morning and I won't see him again until December. I don't want to be a sobbing, sleepy mess in a Columbian airport!

Junior wants me to take the toothless picture off the blog, so you have only a couple of days to enjoy it before something more attractive goes up. He has teeth now. They're temporary, but the real ones go in soon. They should, for the price he had to pay for them! His ribs still kill him...we think maybe he cracked something. He'd love your prayers.

I don't know what Peru is going to be like. I am expectationless. But I hear that my host mom is a great cook...and I'm looking forward to seeing how the Lima field became integrated, checking out the drop in center and the work that they do on the streets and how it is similar or different than what we do in Rio. It will be good for me. But I definitely crave your prayers.

My headache isn't subsiding, so I think I'll pass on stories for today. Later...because this too, has been a crazy week!

Elephants and Hiking

It’s been a wild week of unexpected visitors.

Yesterday I was running around like that chicken in the opening scene of City of God. It started out with me falling down the stairs on my way out of the house, which put me about 30 minutes late starting off the day. And in pain. Then it was off to Dona Dora’s house, where a ragtag bunch of Christian carnival people were putting on a marionette show that told the story of the conversion of Saul with a complete gospel presentation and scary circus music. And a light show that ran off its own power source: a motorcycle battery. All contained in a suitcase. The children were thrilled. Rapt. Captivated. My favorite line from the day? The missionaries/circus folk: “So who made Saul go blind?” Raianne: “Jesus!” Julia, age 3: “No, silly, it was the elephant!” See the picture for the explanation. I could see why she was confused. The elephant was by far more interesting than the disembodied voice from heaven for me too!


From there, we ran, almost literally, to Borel. Some of you may remember that was the first favela I ever visited. My poem in the latest issue of The Cry was written after that initial visit. YWAM has a really great established work up there, and since this group’s translator knew some of the people, she snagged us an invitation to go up. Borel isn’t like Manguinhos or the part of Jacarezinho that we live in. It has less people, only about 30,000, but is fully contained on a mountain. With one road. And lots of stairs. The favela across the way is operated by the Third Command, the second largest drug gang/mafia in Rio. But Borel is solidly Red Command, which means it is constantly a war zone. And the entrances are highly guarded. So we, being seven gringos with a large collection of tattoos, piercings, and dreadlocks, weren’t exactly going to blend in with the surroundings! A guy from YWAM came and got us in a combi, one of those little rattling VW buses, and then escorted us up the hill. On foot. And I was wearing heels. Now let me try to explain what climbing Borel is like. First, the stairs are concrete, mostly, except when they are tree roots, or rotting wood, or when the concrete has worn thin and you step gingerly over holes that expose a drop-off of roughly twenty or thirty feet. And sometimes, of course, they’re nothing but mud. Or worse. And they go straight up, without hand-rails. Well, there were a few rails, but they were at knee height for me! And every few feet, you have to greet someone, say hi, nod, try not to let your wheezing be too obvious...So we finally arrived up top and checked out the daycare center, the library and computer center that used to be a Macumba/spiritist center until the YWAMers prayed over it so much that the spirits left and the owners couldn’t get anyone to buy the place...and the drug kingpin finally just gave the keys to the YWAMers...then there was the music school and lastly, the medical center, where a couple of nurses have gotten really good at treating malnutrition and gunshot wounds and pneumonia and things of that sort.
The YWAM guy has a great sense of humor. The circus missionaries were a little freaked out by the time we got up there, even more so when we started talking about the spiritist house, and they asked some questions about whether it’s dangerous to live here. The YWAM dude looked at me and we both burst out laughing. “Man, it’s dangerous to live in the world,” he says, quickly adding, “But here in Borel, we’re really close to heaven...” In so many ways!!! We also had the dubious pleasure of getting not one, not two, but somewhere in the vicinity of eight chances to see the 16 year old drug kingpin of Borel, as he drove by in some tricked-out midnight blue vehicle. I’m sure it had tinted windows the first time, when it was just him driving by. The second and third and fourth times, they were rolled down, as he’d invited some of his henchmen to check out the gringos waiting for a combi back down the hill...being teenagers, they must have wanted to show off. Not just with fast driving and ridiculous donuts in the praça that barely had room for two cars to pass, but also with their machine guns hanging out the windows (like the police do). Just showing off. Not pointed at anyone. But it was a little unnerving. And when it started happening at three-minute intervals, and they were winking and blowing kisses, we finally managed to snag a ride...thank you Jesus! I don’t know how one rejects a teenaged mafia hit man...I hope never to have to find out...