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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Hidden Peace



Deep up into the mountains of LaLibertad (the department that I live in down here) is a place called Huaranchal... this place that had taken us about 18 hours to get to. Better have been worth it right?? With nothing but a rocky dirt road to reach it, this little city thrived on the earth and definitely appreciated it. It was a lot cleaner up there than here in Pacasmayo. Granted it is just habit to throw your trash on the ground for some down here ( I don't think I will ever get used to that), but it just seemed like a happier place to live. There weren't a million mototaxis buzzing around. We could leave our combi unattended without fear of theft or vandalism. Everyone seemed to be fairly healthy and there was always some athletic event to look forward to in the evening. Huaranchal had an amazing outdoor football/soccer field, which was surrounded by breathtaking mountains, an "indoor" or more like covered football arena where they could go when it got too dark to play on the actual pitch, a volleyball court, and children running around making up their own fun. I even saw some kids rolling tires across the field in a race. Tops were also a main attraction for the 6-10 crowd as Miller the Maestro as we named him showed off his mastered talent.


So what were we doing there if to me it seemed like a place of hidden peace? For one, they are completely isolated and could probably use a little excitement every so often. I think for the kids of Huaranchal we definitely provided that. Two, it was a mining town and the kids were either already working in the mines or had parents that worked them, leaving them free to wander the city alone during the day.. not all that different from Pacasmayo actually. It is definitely different here seeing kids as young as 2 walking around by themselves.

Fred came up the mountain in tow with his huge box filled with a dvd player, speakers, projector, sound system, and even an energy converter for a car battery if we couldn't get an electrical hookup all for the sole purpose of creating a little movie theater for the kids. He played all of his fairly outdated kid’s bible story movies, which actually turned out to be quite a hit. This excitement kind of took away from the real reason we had come to Huaranchal.. Pastor Auden was invited by one of his friends to come minister in his home town, which unbenounced to us was going to be more of an experience just getting there than we could have ever imagined. They had set up a worship concert in the indoor football arena which gathered a fairly good sized crowd but was a little overshadowed by this outdoor movie that we had set up a good 200 yards away.

I think just being there let the town know that they were definitely not forgotten. The kids had attached themselves to Kevin and I being probably two of the first gringos (white people) that they had ever seen. Gringo, being not always the nicest of terms for us but it’s usually pretty harmless. I'm going to try and not take too much offense to it. They were completely enamored with Kevin because he could actually talk to them in Spanish as well as tell them everything about the United States and about English. We even had 8 and 9 year olds talking politics with us, asking us who our president was and telling us about the state of their country's government. I, on the other hand have no idea why they were so interested in me. I was surrounded by kids every single time I walked outside. They would try to talk to me in Spanish, which completely started my crash course into Espanol. After a couple of hours of blank stares on both our parts we were finally starting to understand a little bit of each other. I had taught them every Spanish word that I knew in English and I was starting to remember some of my questions phrases from middle school Spanish so I could ask them their name and how old they were. It’s so funny interacting and playing with kids that have no idea what you are staying. There is definitely an international children's language that fortunately I still speak. :-)

So in the middle of all of this crazy hoopla, I start feeling my lympnodes swelling, my throat becoming red and inflamed, and a slight fever coming on. By Saturday night I woke up in a cold sweat and my lympnodes had grown to the size of grapefruits. Sunday was not a good day for me... The rest of the worship team had gone to the hot springs that were about a mile's hike away, which is completely up there on my fun list. I begrudgingly went back to the hotel and slept from about 8am until 4pm.. waking up here and there to take some ibprophen to try and break my fever.

Somehow I managed to get up and back down to the rest of civilization just so I could be mad rushed by a group of kids trying to ask me what their name was in English.. We finally just started making up names when they weren't happy with the answer, "it's the same in English". Kevin had started this game the day before and we decided that it was just easier and a lot more fun to make up names. This definitely took my mind off of the sickness until I got to dinner that night and was served a big bowl of Chicken Foot Soup. Thankfully during the prayer, Fred swapped our bowls so that I wouldn't have to stare at the foot that took up half of my bowl. Thankfully, my fever broke during the night because we had to get up at 3am to start our journey back to Pacasmayo. I was no longer going on with the group to retrieve birth certificates and just wanted to go back home to my horrible bed here in my apartment and sleep for the next couple of days. That's basically what I did seeing as that I didn't really leave my apartment from 11am on Monday until 9am this morning (Wednesday). I still can't really figure out what I had/ have but it seems to have worked itself out with the help of some antibiotics and a whole lot of sleep.






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