My first 9 hours in Peru I spent in an airport waiting for my flight from Lima, the capital, to Cajamarca, another major city in Peru. I am part of the group Engineers Without Borders and this year our project was to go build a reservoir in La Huaylla, a community in Peru.
Now, 9 hours would be no big deal if we all just slept before our next flight which was at 5 in the morning. By all, I mean Hannah, Evan, Josh, Semaj and Olyvia- the first half of the team. We all met in Lima to head to La Huaylla together and rather than getting even an ounce of sleep we spent all night talking about things I couldn’t remember if my life depended on it.
We board our plane hours later, a little exhilarated, excited and yes of course, exhausted. When we land we are greeted very cheerfully by Jorge, the HAUSS president (the HAUSS is the waterboard committee in La Huaylla) and two Peace Corps volunteers, Andrew and Joe. They haggle with 3 taxis and finally agree on 8 soles each to take us to a combi. Now, let me just explain that all of this is in Spanish and I am just nodding along like sure and yeah, when next thing I know we are taking a taxi to who knows where, with who knows who, and we’re driving as if a notorious mass murder was in pursuit. If any of you know the videogame Crazy Taxi, that’s exactly how driving in Peru is. Like seriously there was a lot of swerving left and right, veering around other taxis that are swerving just as dramatically, all that was missing was the jumping over other cars feature in the videogame. As a girl who lived in Egypt for a couple of years, I felt exhilarated at seeing this sort of driving again, it’s so full of life and energy- with a lot of ‘close calls’. It’s just very different from the United States system of green-now you can go, STOP- now you have to stop; it’s unsystematic.
We take an approximately 2-hour long minibus (which I learned is referred to as a combi) to La Huaylla. We finally arrive to this apartment complex that the Municipality provided us as housing while we work on the reservoir. Other than the stairs not having any railings and we were scared we’d plummet to our deaths, it was beautiful. They gave us four very large rooms, each with its own bathrooms; the complex had a gym, a soccer field with artificial grass and the three-story building meant that the roof had a stunning view of the entire community. We put our bags down and chop chop ,no time to be wasted, as we spend the rest of the day visiting the construction site- which turns out had been changed without us being informed, meeting with Jorge to discuss our designs- which led to the entire reconstruction of the design of the reservoir and hitting the market to buy basic necessities like toilet paper, mattress covers and soap. I learned the very first day that our strategy for our project will not go according to plan, there will be a lot of adjustments and compromises and as a team, we will have to be flexible.
So, let me pick up where I left off,
At the back of a pickup truck, that’s where I’ll pick up the rest of my adventures in Peru. This was the second day in La Huaylla and we had just finished a meeting with the Mayor of the town. The meeting was just a courtesy meeting that included a lot of hello’s, thank you’s, and a bit of talk over budget. After the meeting, a pickup truck pulls up to take us to a few reservoir in neighboring towns to see how they were built. As excited gringos (a term they use for English-speaking foreigners) who finally got some sleep, we hop onto the back of the truck, ready for adventure.
We drive over some sketchy roads and arrive thirty minutes later versus five. This was my first introduction to the concept of “Peruvian time”, a phrase I had heard repeatedly from my fellow comrades, yet I had failed to experience in person until then. In Peru, time is more lenient. Being a few hours late to a meeting or exaggerating the time frame of an activity is part of the culture. So, when they say the reservoir is “right here” or “five minutes”, add on a few digits because you’re not getting back anytime soon. But, those thirty minutes, stranded in the back of a truck, was one of my favorite moments during my entire trip. We passed a handful of villages observing, at least for me, for the first time how people went by their day to day activities. Clothes hanging, clay-hay huts, soccer in the streets, smiles and hunched backs gave me a glimpse of who I was here to help.
After visiting the sites, we head back to our rooms to work on education and finish reconstructing our designs. By education I am referring to our team’s intention of teaching third to fifth graders about STEM and hygiene. Our first class would be a week from then.
We spend the next few weeks at construction where we ran into a handful, or a bushel, of problems. Our very first day of inspection led us to realize that the soil was weaker than the one at the original construction site we had planned on. We needed to perform a soil competency test, but we did not have the materials. The team got to thinking and the next day we go up the mountain with three borrowed weights from the gym.
Peru was the first country I had ever visited where I knew nothing about the language being spoken-Spanish. But, to quote Evan Barnell, our project lead, “there is more to language than speaking.” His remark proved to be truer as the days flew by.
I landed myself in a few tricky situations by only being able to say a few words and I was only able to get myself out of it by using extreme hand motions. On a one particularly difficult construction day where no Spanish translators were around, the laborers made fun of us and jokingly suggested we bring a blackboard to help with illustration. Another day I ended up singing the national anthem with a random guy on the street who was selling flags because my response to everything was “si.” I learned that not knowing a language will land you in funny situations that you wouldn’t have landed in otherwise, which also makes for great stories afterwords.
Now, 9 hours would be no big deal if we all just slept before our next flight which was at 5 in the morning. By all, I mean Hannah, Evan, Josh, Semaj and Olyvia- the first half of the team. We all met in Lima to head to La Huaylla together and rather than getting even an ounce of sleep we spent all night talking about things I couldn’t remember if my life depended on it.
We board our plane hours later, a little exhilarated, excited and yes of course, exhausted. When we land we are greeted very cheerfully by Jorge, the HAUSS president (the HAUSS is the waterboard committee in La Huaylla) and two Peace Corps volunteers, Andrew and Joe. They haggle with 3 taxis and finally agree on 8 soles each to take us to a combi. Now, let me just explain that all of this is in Spanish and I am just nodding along like sure and yeah, when next thing I know we are taking a taxi to who knows where, with who knows who, and we’re driving as if a notorious mass murder was in pursuit. If any of you know the videogame Crazy Taxi, that’s exactly how driving in Peru is. Like seriously there was a lot of swerving left and right, veering around other taxis that are swerving just as dramatically, all that was missing was the jumping over other cars feature in the videogame. As a girl who lived in Egypt for a couple of years, I felt exhilarated at seeing this sort of driving again, it’s so full of life and energy- with a lot of ‘close calls’. It’s just very different from the United States system of green-now you can go, STOP- now you have to stop; it’s unsystematic.
We take an approximately 2-hour long minibus (which I learned is referred to as a combi) to La Huaylla. We finally arrive to this apartment complex that the Municipality provided us as housing while we work on the reservoir. Other than the stairs not having any railings and we were scared we’d plummet to our deaths, it was beautiful. They gave us four very large rooms, each with its own bathrooms; the complex had a gym, a soccer field with artificial grass and the three-story building meant that the roof had a stunning view of the entire community. We put our bags down and chop chop ,no time to be wasted, as we spend the rest of the day visiting the construction site- which turns out had been changed without us being informed, meeting with Jorge to discuss our designs- which led to the entire reconstruction of the design of the reservoir and hitting the market to buy basic necessities like toilet paper, mattress covers and soap. I learned the very first day that our strategy for our project will not go according to plan, there will be a lot of adjustments and compromises and as a team, we will have to be flexible.
So, let me pick up where I left off,
At the back of a pickup truck, that’s where I’ll pick up the rest of my adventures in Peru. This was the second day in La Huaylla and we had just finished a meeting with the Mayor of the town. The meeting was just a courtesy meeting that included a lot of hello’s, thank you’s, and a bit of talk over budget. After the meeting, a pickup truck pulls up to take us to a few reservoir in neighboring towns to see how they were built. As excited gringos (a term they use for English-speaking foreigners) who finally got some sleep, we hop onto the back of the truck, ready for adventure.
We drive over some sketchy roads and arrive thirty minutes later versus five. This was my first introduction to the concept of “Peruvian time”, a phrase I had heard repeatedly from my fellow comrades, yet I had failed to experience in person until then. In Peru, time is more lenient. Being a few hours late to a meeting or exaggerating the time frame of an activity is part of the culture. So, when they say the reservoir is “right here” or “five minutes”, add on a few digits because you’re not getting back anytime soon. But, those thirty minutes, stranded in the back of a truck, was one of my favorite moments during my entire trip. We passed a handful of villages observing, at least for me, for the first time how people went by their day to day activities. Clothes hanging, clay-hay huts, soccer in the streets, smiles and hunched backs gave me a glimpse of who I was here to help.
After visiting the sites, we head back to our rooms to work on education and finish reconstructing our designs. By education I am referring to our team’s intention of teaching third to fifth graders about STEM and hygiene. Our first class would be a week from then.
We spend the next few weeks at construction where we ran into a handful, or a bushel, of problems. Our very first day of inspection led us to realize that the soil was weaker than the one at the original construction site we had planned on. We needed to perform a soil competency test, but we did not have the materials. The team got to thinking and the next day we go up the mountain with three borrowed weights from the gym.
Peru was the first country I had ever visited where I knew nothing about the language being spoken-Spanish. But, to quote Evan Barnell, our project lead, “there is more to language than speaking.” His remark proved to be truer as the days flew by.
I landed myself in a few tricky situations by only being able to say a few words and I was only able to get myself out of it by using extreme hand motions. On a one particularly difficult construction day where no Spanish translators were around, the laborers made fun of us and jokingly suggested we bring a blackboard to help with illustration. Another day I ended up singing the national anthem with a random guy on the street who was selling flags because my response to everything was “si.” I learned that not knowing a language will land you in funny situations that you wouldn’t have landed in otherwise, which also makes for great stories afterwords.
However, I also learned the value of languages. There were many times where all I wanted to do was ask a simple question, communicate with the people and understand how they live their daily lives, but I couldn’t simply because we organize our letters differently to form words. Furthermore, the people of Peru will be a lot more comfortable around you because they can communicate with you, you become less foreign in a way. My struggle with Spanish has made me more dedicated in maintaining the languages I already know, and it has made me take my intention in minor in Mandarin much more seriously. I have become more dedicated than I had ever been before.
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