Cakes

Lima, Ayacucho, PERU

For someone who usually doesn't make a big deal of their birthday, last week was surprisingly cake-filled. First I went to Lima to meet my former Ranelagh housemate Sinead and her four Australia-bound friends from Ballincollig. We went surfing, had a couple of nice meals out, including a birthday dinner and cake for me, and a really fun night out.
It was great to meet up with the girls and to hear their Cork accents (as far as I can tell, there are no other Irish people in Ayacucho).

Back in Ayacucho, a "surprise" party was thrown for me in the shelter. I had another (very creamy) cake, which my face was pushed into (a Peruvian custom!)
and I got some nice presents - the kids bought me a wallet and the other volunteers gave me a jersey of the local football team, Inti-Gas.
Then on Saturday night there was a joint birthday party for me, Emilie (a French friend of mine) and her Peruvian friend Lorena (our birthdays fall within three days of each other). We made a brownie cake so that our faces couldn't be covered in cream - Emilie has lived in Ayacucho for a few years so was well aware of the custom involving birthday cakes! It was a fun night.
In between all these parties, I continued my work at Los Cachorros, which includes helping out at our chocolatería. This has now expanded to be a repostería, so I spent a morning in the home of a Dutch woman (picture a lovely, cake-baking grandmother type) who runs a nursery here as she taught a few of us (mainly Deysi, the 18 year old mother of two who used to live in our shelter but who we are now training to run the repostería) to make cakes. I hadn't done things like separating the whites and yokes of eggs since "helping" Mum, i.e. about twenty years ago (I realised in this week that I turned 29 that I can now say things like "I haven't done this in twenty years" and not be exaggerating). I quite liked making the cakes, although I learned that the nicest ones have loads of sugar, butter and chocolate in them!

While on the topic of celebrating anniversaries, I started my career break this week last year - its been a great year and right now I feel like I will continue with travelling and volunteering abroad for the next two years! So I wonder where I'll turn 30...

The Jungle Blog

San Francisco, Puchari, PERU

Since arriving in South America, and especially since getting to Ayacucho, I've heard a lot about la selva (the jungle) and last week's "Festival of the Coca Leaf" in Pichari provided the perfect reason to go. So I took the six-hour mini-van ride north through amazing and changing scenery (where the mountain roads reminded me of the so-called "World's Most Dangerous Road" that I cycled down in Bolivia) with my friend Miguel. He is one of the few people from Ayacucho who I have met who can speak English. Although he is about to qualify to be an English teacher, my level of Spanish is about the same as his level of English (and I wouldn't consider myself in any way able to teach Spanish to anyone - an indication of what appears to me as the low standard of the education system in Peru), so we talk half the time in English and half in Spanish - a handy arrangement.

On arrival in San Francisco (the town where we spent our first night) after our sweaty journey, we did as the locals do - we went for a wash in the river. The water was warm and it was busy with people washing themsleves, their clothes and even their moto-taxis (note the guy shaving in the moto-taxi´s mirror while his friend washes it).The fact that I wore swimming shorts rather than just my underwear made me stand out - although it would have been hard to blend in given that I was the only white foreigner there (I didn't see any other non-Peruvians during this four-day trip). Washing myself in a river across from a topless old woman who was doing her laundry was one of the most "third world experiences" that I've had here.

After a night out with Miguel's brother and his friend, we headed an hour up the (dirt) road to Pichari. During our three days there we watched some of the festival's events, including:

• a singing contest (I am not a big fan of Peruvian music - click here to see Marisol, who I saw in concert in Ayacucho, who is a popular and typical example);
• a running race (I was one of the only people who clapped for the people as they crossed the finish line - even for junior events the Peruvians only clapped for the winner, and then without much enthusiasm); and
• a version of the ploughing championships involving the four stages of planting and producing coca (this was scheduled to start at 10am, but when we left at 1pm to get our bus back to Ayacucho the event still hadn't started - punctuality is not a Peruvian trait).

I didn't go to the cock-fighting competition, and then we missed the moto-taxi race as we spent that day doing a great hike through a lush, fruit-filled jungle track to six impressive waterfalls.Note that Muguel is about the average height for Peruvians - in Peru I have often found myself in the novel position of being the tallest person in a room full of people.

It was interesting to see a side of Peru that is quite different to Ayacucho: Pichari was hot right through the night, whereas in Ayacucho when the sun sets at 6pm it gets cold due to the altitude; and I felt my first rain since the end of the rainy season in Ayacucho in April. I plan to go to the jungle again when travelling in north Peru or Ecuador.

Cheery and tuneful?

An account of my cycling trip in Argentina back in February has been published in the blog of "Journey Latin America" - check it out at:

http://www.journeylatinamerica.co.uk/papagaio/Blog/Papagaio/August-2010/Cycling-the-Argentinean-lakes.aspx

Ayacucho in Miniature

Huanta, PERU

Huanta is a town just over an hour from Ayacucho. I went there last week having recently read about it and the devastating effects that the Sendero Luminoso (the "Shining Path" - a communist terrorist organisation that was founded in Ayacucho. Between 1980 and 2000, 69,280 people died or disappeared as a result of the armed conflict between the Shining Path and the government) had on the town. Apart from the effects of the Shining Path, I found many things in Huanta that are similar to things in Ayacucho:

A nice central plaza;
A mirador overlooking the town;Breastfeeding is so openly prevalent there is even a statue;
Several churches, big and small;
Adobe houses (I find the process by which a Hannah Montana poster ends up in the window of a house in a mountain town in Peru mindboggling);
Street art - the phrase translates as "The majority of people waste a lot of time talking about the problems that confront them" - I didn't realise that smurfs were such great sages!;

Educational and instructive wall paintings;
Moto taxis - these three-wheelers are everywhere and for €0.30 will take you anywhere in the city. Many are pimped, though manily with religious quotes and pictures. Most Peruvians I know are shocked when I tell them that I walk the 25 minutes walk (at my fast pace) between my house and my work - the concept of enjoying walking doesn't seem to have caught on here.

Serious Clowning

Ayacucho, PERU

Last Monday, on my day off from Los Cachorros, I spent the day volunteering with another organisation. The day involved dressing up as a clown and driving in a van into the mountains surrounding Ayacucho.

After driving through amazingly scenic mountain valleys, we visited three villages. My job was:

1. Attract all the children to the center of the village (this was easily done as not much seems to happen in these remote villages, so the sight and sound of a van full of clowns certainly got their attention);
2. Join in the games that the "head clown" played with the kids, where the prizes were toothbrushes;
3. Once we had all the kids happy and lined up, I put on surgical gloves and a facemask over my painted face and acted as a dental assistant as we cleaned the kids' teeth and gave advice on dental hygiene - and boy did they need it judging by the terrible state of their teeth.

Being a dental assistant while dressed as a clown in remote Peruvian villages is certainly an image I'll keep with me for quite a long time.

Upwardly Mobile

Ayacucho, PERU

Last week while I was bringing the kids in my PE class to the nearby public frontón (a cross between squash and handball) courts, we came across a young boy asleep on the side of the road. The boys told me his name is Robert and that he used to live in the Los Cachorros' shelter. Although he ran away from the shelter just before I came, I had heard of him because soon after I arrived the kids told the staff that they had heard rumours that Robert had died on the streets. But then the staff found out that he had gone back to the jungle (about seven hours south of Ayacucho) where his family lives.

When we got back I told the staff that we had met Robert. The next day when I turned up for my 2pm - 10pm shift, I found him back living in the shelter - it was great to see that the hungry- and dirty-looking boy who I saw sleeping on the streets the day before now had clean clothes, food and a bed. The staff think that he will leave again after awhile, so I am happy just to teach him a few things (I introduced him to Tetris in my computer class) while he's here. And I was glad to hear that he remembered some of the English words that a previous volunteer had taught him - so I see now that even with the kids who leave some of what we're doing sticks.

Speaking of people on the up, I went paragliding in the mountains surrounding Ayacucho. After our first attempt to take off resulted in a crash landing (we just avoided landing on a large cactus!), I then had a great, relaxing flight - a nice way to spend a morning.

Then to round off a good week, all the staff and boys in the permenant shelter went on a day out to the countryside where we played games and some football before swimming in a pool heated by natural springs - it was a fun day out.

Señor Gringo

Ayacucho, PERU

As I left my house the other day, a woman dressed in the traditional (and in Ayacucho still typical) clothing of woolen tights, layered skirt, cardigan, hat and with long hair in two plaits came rushing up to me and said "Señor Gringo, ¿quieres comprar mi cuy?". As I said "no, gracias" I thought that that woman and her question, which can be translated as "Mr. Foreigner, do you want to buy my guinea pig?", sums up a lot about life in Ayacucho.

Firstly, there is a huge amount of casual street trading here - the streets are full with people just standing in a spot holding a few random things for sale, like socks, toothpaste or a few pillows. While others have a wheelbarrow or some other type of stand where they display their goods,which can include things like "Bin Laden" insecticide (I'm not sure what the existence of this product says about Peru's attitude towards the US or Al Qaeda).For the record, while the other cities that I've visited in Peru (Lima, Ica, Arequipa) all have large, modern shopping centres that wouldn't look out of place in Dublin, the best Ayacucho (which has a similar population to Cork) has is a poorly laid out shop smaller than Bishopstown's Centra.

The second thing that the woman's question brought to mind was all the different names that I am called here:

• Shop assistants or the women working in the markets call me either joven (young man) or papá (dad). Bizarrely, it is usually people around my age or younger who call me joven and old women who call me papá.
• The boys in the shelter call me profesor (or more usually profe), although since I shaved my head they've started calling me pelado (baldy) and when the Dutch footballers Robben and Sneijder appear on TV they say "look, profe Kieran is on TV!" (speaking of the World Cup, as Los Cachorros is a Dutch charity I decided to support Holland, which has turned out very well!).
• But the name/title/insult by which I am referred to most often is "gringo". When I started my trip (on the so-called "Gringo Trail") in Mexico I was told that gringo is an insult which technically only refers to people from the US. But here in Ayacucho I think it just means foreigner. While I have heard people here call me gringo with a tone indicating their dislike of foreigners, most people here simply say the word as a statement. For instance, as I walk through the markets (Ayacucho may not have modern supermarkets, but it does have loads of fruit, vegetable, fish and clothes markets) many people running the stalls say "gringo" as I walk past - half to themselves and half as a greeting or just as an acknowledgement of my presence. And in my neighbourhood many people reply to my "hola" simply with "gringo".

Maybe its just me that finds this quite odd, given that in Ireland we wouldn't address someone as "foreigner". Then again, I sort of like the sound of Señor Gringo, and besides "what's in a name?".