Edison's Ramp

"Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. Find ways to be with those who are suffering by all means, including personal contact and visits, images, sound. By such means awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world."
~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Master

We landed in Pisco, Peru five days ago and I already find myself scheming up ways to stay longer or to return to this struggling, dusty, confused city. 85 volunteers from all over the world are living in one compound - complete with a very large kitchen, several dirty dorm rooms, a common room, and outdoor patio. The site is a strange combination of reality tv meets hippie grassroots organizing. Yet the drama is kept to a minimum and the nights are passed drinking beer and listening to kumbaya around the campfire blazing in a busted steel drum.Some people are here for a few weeks . . . and others meant to be here for a few weeks and just never left, finding themselves still in Pisco months, or years, later.

While the compound is a complete social experiment worthy of extensive study and examination, the reason everyone has arrived is quite simple. To help people who simply want a roof over their heads and who are unable to support themselves after the devastation that claimed so many lives and livelihoods.

There are countless projects happening every day with crews working to make doors and walls, pour concrete floors, brainstorm cheap and effective earthquake proof construction techniques, install toilets, bring in electricity, the list is endless.

Monday I joined a team of 6 to work on renovating a house to make it wheelchair accessible. A brick wall fell on Edison, now 22 years old, and crushed one of his lower vertebrates, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Pisco, a city with only 1 half-paved road, is not exactly the easiest place to navigate in a wheelchair. And neither was his dirt-floored home where he lives with his single mother Blanca. The group had already laid a concrete floor within the crumbling walls of their home, and Monday I joined in time to lay a concrete ramp that spans from the street up into the house. Building a ramp with rudimentary tools and no one that really remembered 10th grade math or how to calculate slope proved to be a new sort of challenge.

We are currently installing interior walls to create 2 separate bedrooms so mother and son will no longer need to share both a room and a bed. The walls are built from scrap wood ripped off donated pallets and turned into 2m x 1m modules. (Click here if you want to know more about this building idea.) Edison and Blanca have rudimentary electricity, yet the only running water comes from the hose outside. The kitchen is a move-able stove and a few dishes. This is a middle class family in Pisco.

And at first I thought: Great! the two of them will have a huge space once we finish; they will each have their own bedroom (9' x 9') and will be able to transform their old bedroom into a living area. Then Blanca told me that once we finish her sister and nieces and nephews are going to move in as well, making the living quarters even more stressed.

As I write this, Edison and Blanca are traveling to Lima for the weekend to visit the doctor. After the earthquake, the doctors installed metal rods in Edison's vertebrate. Three years later, the metal rods are now broken and causing him agonizing pain. All the money the family has is being poured into surgeries, medical bills, and travel expenses.

Edison's story wrenches my heart. And what is even worse is that this is just one of countless.

Pisco is more than far from recovered from the earthquake. Construction workers flock the streets, the hardware store is always full, and piles of rubble mark every street corner. Many people were left homeless immediately after the earthquake, especially those who were renting their homes. Landlords could not afford to rebuild their rental homes and those who were living there were left without options. Other landlords who had lost their own homes moved into their rentals thus kicking their tenants out. And where did all these people go? To make-shift communities made from tarp, metal scraps, and leaning wooden planks.

At times it seems so daunting. When will this city recover? Will this city recover? And then you see Blanca push her son across the new level floor, and even though her heart hurts too much to physically smile sometimes, you can see her eyes sparkle.

"If we don't encounter pain, ills, we won't look for the causes of pain and ills to find a remedy, a way out of the situation."
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

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Thanks to my good friend Robert and his desire to dapple in the art of html (freak) I have a new look to my blog! Same stuff, just now prettier. So at least when I write things late at night that don't make sense, there's a pretty background.

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Project Preview: Pisco, Peru

As wonderful as it is to hostel hop, chat with travelers from Germany, Australia, England, Brazil, and explore the many wonders that Latin America offers, it does get wearing after a while. Estoy paseando - I am passing through Latin America, I tell locals in my broken Spanish, to get to know other cultures and to see the world before heading back to school. That is the short, Spanish version. But the longer English one? It is the journey not the arrival that matters . . . or something similar that has been plastered on the back of countless graduation tee shirts. Isn't that what they say?

So then, what is my quest? What is my reason for heading out on this trip? To learn Spanish, to get to know others' customs, to help, to leave a mark of good behind me . . . to . . . Perhaps, I still don't know.

But I keep coming back to the words of a friend I made on the plane flight from Guatemala City to Cancun, Mexico in December. His skin was dark black and his accent thick. And while his wrinkles and high rise slacks gave his age away, his perfect English and his profound thoughts came unexpectedly. So much for first impressions. He was from Trinidad, raised in a rural poor village, who had found his way into the M.I.T. Engineering school and had continued on to be a successful contractor in Boston. In his spare time he traveled the world, gracing every continent; and while he wouldn't tell me how many countries he had set foot in, I wouldn't be surprised if it was close to them all. We spoke about my trip, my dreams, my goals, and a lot about my confusion towards the meaning of it all. He told me: "As long as you leave something good behind in every place you go, you have a purpose to be living."

So with that constantly ringing in the back of my mind, I present you with our next project that we have serendipitously come upon by word -of-mouth from some fellow Danish travelers:

Pisco is located 160 miles from Lima and received the brunt of the 8.0 earthquake that swept through the southwestern coast of Peru in 2007. 80% of the city was destroyed in one day, leaving the town of 130,000 residents homeless, void of any sanitation facilities or medical care, and without food or water. 430 Pisco residents died, 148 of whom were attending mass inside the main cathedral which completely collapsed when the tremors hit. The initial response was chaotic, but teams from Peru's Government, world-wide NGOs, and the UN swept in with $37 million in relief aid.

And now? 18% of the population has fled the city, and while restoration efforts are continuing, more and more citizens are becoming frustrated with a situation that is still in shambles over 3 years later. Good article here if you're interested.

We are heading to Pisco tomorrow to volunteer with an organization called Pisco Sin Fronteras that has been working since 2008 to help rebuild the city little by little through the efforts of volunteers and travelers. After reading about the destruction and hearing horror stories from neighboring regions, it will certainly be interesting to see the devastation first hand and to be able to extend a helping hand; to leave a bit of good behind, even if for only a few weeks.

Busing Latin America: A Little Meditation and a Lot of Hunger

After busing across Central America, I figured Amanda and I could handle anything. We'd survived 7, 8, 9 hour bus rides like champs. We would load up on snacks - crackers, cheese, bananas, apples, and lollipops, plug into our Ipods, and watch the terrain poetically change from banana plantations to mountainous rock to ocean. We would doze off occasionally. Amanda would distract me with small chatter when she glimpsed the glazed look in my eyes that could only mean I was thinking too hard about the future, home, relationships, or what to do next. And I would do the same for her. We developed a familiarity with silence; silences sometimes spurred by complete and painful hunger, but also silences that come from the quiet mediation that is only brought on when you are confronted with too many hours of complex questions.

Amanda and I spent 92.5 hours on buses across Central America. I would consider us to be professionals. Right?

But, South America is big.

And I mean really big.

As I sat on our host family's porch one evening in Puerto El Morro, slapping mosquitoes and drinking Cifrut (South America's "Sunny D" which I have become obsessed with!), I began flipping through the Peru pages of the Lonely Planet guidebook. Looking for a cute beach town to pop into between construction projects, I found a small town called Trujillo that was - according to the map - just about half way between Guayaquil, Ecuador's southern most big city, and Lima. Trujillo was supposedly surrounded by Incan ruins and surfers. Great, two bonuses! Wait . . . 18 hours! That couldn't be possible. Suddenly less excited, I closed the book, vowed to make a plan later, and headed to bed.

That plan never did get made, and I never did pick up the book again. There just wasn't any time in between all of the other books I was simultaneously reading and all the time spent swinging listlessly in the hammocks. Or maybe I was just in denial. Either way, the day to leave Puerto El Morro crept upon us faster than we realized and we were soon packing our bags and boarding a bus to travel the 2 hours east from the pacific coast to the smoggy city of Guayaquil.

Once at the bus station, we learned we had already missed the single daily bus to Trujillo. We could either wait at the bus station for 10 hours or spend the time at least getting as far south as we could. One of my dear family friends wrote me an email several weeks ago, asking: "Are you making plans as you go, or do you decide to go somewhere and then figure out how?" This example is the best explanation I can come up with - a little bit of both, but mostly just trial and quite a lot error.

For $11 we were able to board a 10 hour bus to Mancora, a sleepy beach town in the north of Peru, where all of Chile, Argentina, and Brazil come to spend summer break (January through March). By accident we had managed to land ourselves in the best-known beach of Peru, where the water was gorgeous, the people were friendly, and all the bars were situated so you could squish your toes in the sand while sipping a famous local Pisco Sour (wish I actually liked them, I'll just have a cerveza).

Yes, it was serendipitous indeed. Except for the fact that we were still extremely far from Lima. 20 hours far.

And I don't care how you look at it, or how "professional" you may be, 20 hours on a bus is far. Especially when your "4 generations too old" Ipod only lasts for 10 hours, and even the thought of reading makes you want to vomit . . .

We boarded the Oreno line, a bus company that offers semi-cama seats (reclining 3/4 of the way) for 110 soles, or about $42 . The first 2 hours we watched The Switch, a silly chick flick that should not have been deemed worthy to be dubbed over into another language. Yet, I at least discovered that my love for Jennifer Anniston is just as strong when she speaks Spanish. And then by the very grace of God, I got sleepy. I found myself yawning and my eyes drooping. And I fell asleep! And by that same grace I stayed asleep until 8 a.m. - later than I ever sleep in a bed down here. Not sure who was smiling on me, but I am thankful. This morning, after sitting through Old Dogs and wishing John Travolta had stopped when he was ahead, I fell asleep again!

When I re-awoke we were driving through the most interesting landscape I have ever seen. The narrow Pan-american Highway wound through steep, rolling sand dunes. To my right dramatic rock cliffs dropped hundreds of feet into the ocean. As we cruised closer to Peru's capital, we could have been in the Middle East as the wind swept the sand into tiny tornadoes that rolled over dusty, tin suburbs.

We pulled into Lima Thursday afternoon, exactly 19.5 hours after we left Mancora Wednesday night. I stepped off the bus very hungry, really having to pee, and with some serious leg cramp. But also actually quite rested and less mentally exhausted than I have felt after shorter bus rides. Perhaps I am finally getting a little better at thinking less and dreaming more.

Just hopefully this pattern continues as we are faced with 23 hours from Lima to Cuzco in just a few short weeks. Wish us luck . . .

Construction Work Snapshots

Project:
To build a 9th grade classroom and an extra bathroom. The elementary school in Puerto El Morro currently has space for kindergarten through 8th grade. While 9th grade in Ecuador is part of secondary school and most children travel to Playas, a larger town 8km from Puerto El Morro, there are a handful of students that daily cannot afford the 50 cent bus fare both ways to attend classes. By building a 9th grade space in the town, these 40 students will be able to continue further with their education. The hope is to have the new classroom finished by the time classes resume in April.

Materials:
5 shovels
2 wheelbarrows (although 1 is often out of commission)
1 pickaxe
1 too-heavy-to-function iron spear
1 40 pound weight (used to manually pack dirt)
1 hammer
3 plastic buckets
wooden planks
1 10' rickety ladder
1 trowel
string

Characters:
The Wizard – The toothless 50 year old began construction work 24 years ago and quickly stepped into the boss position without anyone really knowing how, or especially, why. We have named him Wizard, although his real name is Zapato (Shoe) – not sure which is better? He is in charge of all decisions and in typical machismo form, nothing can happen without the final nod of Wizard's approval. While he is officially the boss, he is the only one to have fallen flat on his face, poured concrete exactly where it is not needed, and has either under or over estimated the amount of dirt needed every time.

Wise Man – Mid 40's, soft-spoken, hardest worker I have ever seen in my life. Most of his communication is done through nods and grunts. It took over 2 weeks to learn his real name – Agusto.

Wimper – This is his real name. The community organizer with New Horizons (the organization we are volunteering with that offers projects across Ecuador). While we at first thought he was the hardest worker out of everyone, we have finally realized that he spends most of his time just looking incredibly busy.



With the encroaching deadline of finishing the classroom by the time school vacation is over in 2 months, our days of construction have not been easy. At all. In 3 weeks I have lifted more buckets of dirt than I ever have and used a shovel for more continuous hours than I ever thought I could. Yet despite all of our toil and subsequent progress, there are just some moments that you wonder how anything gets done at all.

I don't care how you look at it, concrete is a bitch. For every 12' x 15' patch of foundation, we need 150 plastic buckets of dirt, 15 bags of cement, some sand, some rocks – it's a precise mixture to say the least. Dirt is delivered from Playas, two towns over, by a dump truck that is painted in typical Latin American fashion – bright yellow, green, red, blue, a giant Fisher Price meets construction. Yet the school is tucked so far into the center of town that it is impossible to deposit the dirt close to the site. Wimper and Wizard begin ripping down the school-yard fence in an effort to squeeze the truck through. Yet after 20 minutes, they realize it's futile and the truck turns around to dump the dirt in the back of someone's house. Now not only is the dirt very far away and on the other side of a concrete wall, but the school fence is also broken. (We wouldn't want to run out of projects now would we?) After 6 hours of hauling dirt, it is still not enough to make concrete for the remaining floor foundation. No problem, we'll add rocks. Wimper heads to the kindergarten playground and begins to scoop up the fine rock chips that lay underneath the rickety, rusting swing set. The sand comes from underneath a pile of trash and wood in the corner of the school-yard. We mix the concrete and hope it will stretch. It falls short. There is no more dirt, no more sand, and we can't make concrete just from the kindergarten rocks. So there is no more work tomorrow. “Maybe we will go fishing!” Wimper exclaims.

The 3 p.m sun wass brutal and the number of buckets of dirt filled, carried 100ft and dumped had reached the hundreds. Josh had drained his water bottle and the water in mine was almost reaching boiling point. We all sat down for a breather in the small patch of speckled shade and wiped our brows. Wimper sent the 7 year old boy, who was filling his bored afternoon by watching and climbing on the rusting rebar towers, to bring back a gallon of water from the nearby store. The boy scampered off. He came back several minutes later balancing the bottle on the back of his neck, keeled over from the weight. “No esta helada! Traiga una helada!” Bring a cold one! Wimper called out. The boy turned around and stumbled back down the hill. When he returned Wimper asked: “Esta helado?” “Es hielo!” It's ice! The boy called back. We watched Wimper take the block of frozen ice from the boy and place it in the sun to melt. Good, in a couple hours we would each have an ounce to drink.


There are two types of scorpions in Puerto El Morro, the brown and the black. According to Wimper, if you get stung by a brown one, you get very sick and should be rushed to the doctor immediately. If you get stung by the black one, it doesn't really matter what you do; you'll die. So what happens when Wimper finds a huge, pregnant black scorpion nestled between the bags of concrete that we have been walking around all day? He holds it by the tail and proceeds to walk around showing it to everyone, poking it with a piece of rebar just to make sure it's good and pissed off. Obviously. Then he drowns it in the bottom 1/8th of a plastic Coke bottle. We continue mixing concrete. Once the scorpion goes limp, Wimper dumps it in the wheelbarrow. It twitches and squirms. We go back to work. Until Wise Man stops shoveling. And when Wise Man stops shoveling, we all stop shoveling. He looks over at the wheelbarrow curiously. “Olvide!” Wimper shouts and rushes to the barrow, jamming his shovel into the head of the scorpion that had been born anew and was proceeding to crawl up the side of the barrow. Now how one forgets they are in the process of killing the most poisonous scorpion I don't really know. By this time Wise Man had returned to shoveling, and feeling guilty by his work ethic, we resume mixing the heavy slop of concrete. “Miren!” Look! Wimper exclaims as he walks over carrying only the bottom half of the mama scorpion, the 70 egg sacs spilling from its stomach. Needless to say, the day quickly falls apart after the anatomy lesson; shoveling just seems so much more mundane.

While the first week was learning the South American science of concrete mixing, the second week was defined by digging a poop hole. A giant 9' x 9' septic tank that the new bathroom will feed into. At this size, the hole will only have to be emptied once every 10 years. We split up into teams – Wizard and Wise Man break up the earth with the pickaxe, Josh shovels it out of the hole, Amanda and I then shovel the dirt from the ground to the wheelbarrow that is poised waist-level on the new foundation, and Wimper wheels the dirt 100 ft away. No, this is not a fast process – not only because of the many steps, but because the ground is made of rock. After 5 days of progressively harder digger and gradually higher dirt slinging, we hit 8'6”. “No mas,” Wimper declares, “Esta finito.” The dirt is too rocky, the work too hard, and the Ecuadorian trio has long been over it. The hole is finished, they all decide. When the only plans you have are a pencil sketch on a muddy scrap of paper, it's easy to change them.

Running Through a Dream

It has taken me 20 months and 7 countries to want to start running again . . .

Back in August, I would lace-up my black non-slip sneakers coated in grease splatter and smeared cake frosting and don my black apron. I would rush out the door, late as always, and coax my '91 salvaged Honda Accord to life, listening to the starter turn over a futile 20 times as I watched the clock steadily tick off minutes. Once it eventually roared to life, I headed west and flipped through channels on the radio debating which overplayed song I wanted to listen to more. I would sigh, take a deep breath, and put on my smiles. The more smiles, the more tips. The more tips, the more money to go abroad! I felt as though every day I was, to steal Tom Petty's famous line, running down a dream.

And now, as my feet hit the pavement and I wipe humid sweat out of my eye, I realize that I am inside that dream; I am here. I scan the horizon and look out across the dry landscape speckled with cows, barbed wire fences, and frail wooden houses. I am in Ecuador. I'm in Ecuador! I am not currently chasing down a dream, but rather running (literally) through one.

20 months ago I raced my final collegiate race. And then I was done. To say that I was “burnt out” would be the understatement of the year. My running shoes sat in the closet untouched except for a few hikes, several bike rides, or when my beautiful, too-fit-for-her-own-good girlfriend dragged me to the gym with her. I went running a few times in Albuquerque – probably a total of 5 outings in 7 months. But each time I would remember why I no longer put myself through such agony – physically, and apparently still emotionally, and then vow to never do that again. Countless people have asked me in disbelief:you don't run anymore; don't you feel ansy; don't you just want to run for fun? I thought you were a runner?

The frustration that was entrenched in my last 2 years of running, and especially in my last months on the track team, had not yet completely passed. It was like getting over an ex-boyfriend, running and I had dated for 9 years, we had our ups and we had our downs together, we cried and we celebrated. There were days I cheated on my running shoes, choosing to sit on the couch instead of lacing up and I was always left with an intense feeling of guilt. And like any end to a long-term relationship, the breakup always hurts more when you get dished the lower-hand. Perhaps I was so burnt out because it was not me who chose to end this dynamic but rather my injury. The chronic pain in my back damaged not only my training but also my mental strength to such an extent that I could not only run without pain, but couldn't run without getting angry to the point of exhaustion.

So why then on January 6th did I choose to pick up the sport again? What made me eventually dispel my negative apprehensions toward running and set out alone for the open-air market in Quito to buy a pair of cheap, mock-Nike running shoes?

Was it because I had watched Amanda head out for a daily jog over the last 2 months? Was it because Amanda and I spontaneously decided back in November that we wanted to run a half-marathon at some point during our trip and I had foolishly agreed? Or was it because I had hit the point in the post-breakup period that I had finally forgotten how frustrated I had been?

No, I don't believe any of these are the reasons. It was more like I just woke up one morning, realized I was in the southern hemisphere and decided things were different down here. And if I may borrow the wit of a dear friend who held my hand – and stretched my back – more than anyone during my injury: perhaps the reason I can run down here is because my hip twists the opposite direction on this side of the equator, causing me to be . . . just . . . normal.

Since the 6th of January and the introduction of my new, pink running shoes – which are slightly small as I (only standing at 5'6”) have bigger feet apparently than Ecuador stocks shoes for, I have taken up running to such an extent that I would (gasp!) say it's become a routine.

Here in Puerto El Morro, after work I hit the dirt roads, finding myself breathing harder than is comfortable, yet knowing that with time I will eventually get back into the stride of things. (And a little pressure from the imminent date of our half-marathon in Santiago, Chile on April 3rd certainly helps the daily motivation.) Instead of training for a race and a team and because of self-assigned pressure, I now run slowly against the backdrop of llamas, hole-in-the-wall ice cream tiendas, and one-lane highways lined by tall, dry grasses.

I suppose this story ends in a happy place; though post-marathon may present a much different view, so stay tuned. Yet for now, I can at least say that I am on the road to recovery in regards to my negative memories of running. And if nothing else, at least I am able to hang with the llamas of South America for a good 30 minutes every day.