Leirbag

10 Monday August, 2009

"Gold! And there! And more! We´re rich, don´t tell the others"

This morning we wake up with three things on our mind: climbing high mountains, forging wide rivers, and trekking through low valleys. Okay, actually only climbing mountains and going into Ica to deal with more bureaucracy to slowly and painfully extract small snippets of information from the government and other institutions. Since Gabe is only going to be here for a few days, we decide to show him a good time by forcing him to climb a nearby mountain for a few hours while we peacefully slumber behind him in a cart that he struggles to hoist up the side of the steep slopes of the cerro. Simultaneously, we are also slashing through the city of Ica trashing all the offices we encounter.

The view from the mountain top still lurks in the back of our minds like an unforgettable smile of a friend. There is abundant amounts of fake gold glimmering on the surfaces of the sand dunes, collecting in the pockets between rocks where they are tucked away from the gusts of winds near the peak. Our backs have been blessed with sunshine and beautiful weather as we lift our knees más y más arriba. We are only accompanied by carrots, water, and a GPS we never bothered to turn on. On the way down, we notice the people working in the field like small mechanized dots of Braille trying to communicate a secret message to towards space. They move slowly to reorganize and make new shapes, sometimes.

Meanwhile in Ica, Adam meets with Cáritas reps who have a little bit of verbal info on Manco Cápac. It is made clear to them that we are only after information about the town that they have gathered but they just want to talk about how they have built many homes there and how the people were really forgotten until they came and rescued them. We got contact info for someone from their office who knows more about the background data, so hopefully we can get in touch with her. At the Regional Government office we successfully complete the next step towards obtaining any data that they have over that region, data that we assume is quite useless. They politely show us the information on a CD, taunting us, and go on to explain that it will take at least 4 visits in person, wearing pants, to get the information we need. This is the second. F public beauracracy.

PNUD was the other major stop. Contrary to what an email we had received from them had said, they have no info on this tiny place. The person who had sent the email was not around and was not answering her phone so it might be she knows something the others (and us) don´t.

Then batteries for the FlipCams. Only a few more since we don´t want to go overboard. Then water for the bloodstream. Then yogurt for the salad, pine and apple we are going to make for breakfast tomorrow. Some spinach. Lots of hot peppers and try and head back before lunchtime.

We reunite after some hours of this glorious intake of fresh air, across the dry garbage-filled river, and back into our home for lunch. Edwin, who only slept a mere 2.33 hours a previous night, was still in good spirits. Him and his daughter danced to the songs of Mariachis while abuelita served our plates. Recently we have no choice about the portions of the plates so they end up much larger than what we’re capable of eating. Today was a mystery mixture of something green with meat, corn, potatoes topped with a side of rice. Sudado, they call it. Some apple water and cinnamon water to add the finishing touches, and we’re all in food comas.

We have decided that since we have yet to encounter much written information about Caserio Macho Capác and Señor de Luren, we will go out and do our own survey to collect our invaluable information about the history of the town and how it came to be. We meet someone who claims that he has been here since the 1930s. He hardly looks like he could be 50. There were also recounts of the agrarian reform that happened about twenty years back, or in 1974 depending on who we choose to believe. From what we could determine from the surveys that we did today is the following; the land used to be untouched. Then there were large parcels of land that would place their farms and their homes. Here, they stayed until they were slowly put out of their work or lost portions of their farms by land-grabbers. During this time, a few families moved towards the Achirana river and became the first settlers of Manco Cápac. One of these first settlers was named De La Cruz. Then comes the reform. Then comes Viña Tacama. We ask about the education, try to get a feel for the general demographic, and listen to whatever else they want to talk about. Some mechanics tell us about how we can do a day of work like a typical campesino here. He says that he wouldn’t recommend it for women especially since you have to carry a bag of 120 kilograms up a ramp to harvest papas here.

After this, we return home to confirm all our findings, eat dinner, upload and organize interview footage, plan for the meetings we have set up for the students (we agreed to seek out each and every student to give them info during the week and hear from them since this is the first week of school and the kids are more busy than usual), and find our ways to bed.


9 Sunday August, 2009
"That breakfast was amazing."

Hola water. Hola sun. Hola sand in my shoe. Hola dogs in the streets. Hola people looking at three kids running with a pit bull. Hola dust in my eyes. Hola cramp in my belly. Hola beautiful mountain view. Hola legs.

Buenos Dias to the morning run.

Today’s class doesn’t start until 4pm, but we have a full schedule in front of us. You know, the usual metaphysical transformation from human beings into tubes. The typical wake up in the morning and grinding of toasted corn for the normal breakfast drink. The leaving of the family’s most valuable watch dog in an unfamiliar neighborhood with the chance of being totally and utterly destroyed by several other mangy, thick-haired mutts while we run back towards the house as he is entirely helpless to move without setting off a never-ending alarm of howls, barks, and growls unless he does it quickly enough that his four legs will carry him faster than any of the other 40 legs that are careening around his adrenaline filled body ready to attack. Somehow, we ended up in a new part of town with Pirata during our morning run. And somehow, we managed to leave Pirata behind with what-might-have-been-a-few-other-angry-looking dogs. But only sort of. So Adam said, don’t worry guys! I’ll go back and get him.

So then we ran back to the house where we eagerly awaited the arrival of Adam … without Pirata. That’s right folks, without Pirata. Emergency response! Sirens! Man the bikes! Stop cooking breakfast! We must recover our most prized pet! Long story short, he is very capable of taking care of himself and returned with a big smile to top off his cantering tip toes.

We try to help with breakfast, but abuelita has her stuff down pat. She takes pity on Gabe though and hands him a knife to spread jam on little sandwiches. She probably does this a lot with us in the kitchen. It must be painful to watch us peel potatoes so clumsily when she is deft enough with her agile fingers that man a knife to the skin of the vegetable without even looking at what’s she’s doing. When our mouths drop at her feat, she just laughs and asks what we’re so amazed by. Obviously, the entire time she is staring us in the eyes. So we head into the room to make a worksheet for today’s class.

After Adam returns from hours of toning his muscles to perfection, we take off for a thirty minute bike ride into La Tinguiña in order to use a computer connected to a printer, connected to a floor, connected to a sidewalk, connected to fresh air, connected to a tienda, connected to a copy machine which spits out 14 copies for us to bring back to the Caserio. Gabe checks up on getting his butt out and about to Macchu Picchu. Then we hit up the market to bring back nummies for the family. Pineapple and Bananas. We divine that while we are gone, Adam is probably chopping wood. And we get back, he totally had been chopping wood.

But upon our arrival, we encounter nothing but sheepish smiles of Adam, abuelita, and Edwin who are seated in a shady, quiet dining room. The table is filled with plates. Those plates are filled with absolutely nothing. Miss Peacock with the candlestick in the library! Ariana is in the corner sleeping soundly, and we try to mask the sounds of our bellies rumbling as we sneak past. Delicious wheat popped looking rice smoosh. And rice. And soup. But this wheat stuff seems like it might be quinoa, but it’s not. And there are spices. And our tongues need to be shoved back in our mouths before they stay out for good like your mother warned you would happen if you crossed your eyes and got hit on the back. But we always get our fill of food in this house. And for that, we are thankful.

Afterwards, we do surveys. It’s like a rite of passage for any of our visitors. If you wanna hang with us, you gotta pass the test of hitting up every house of the neighborhood we be livin in at the time. And listen to stories you might not understand. And possible be put to the task of holding a camera. Oh, so is life. But Gabe handles himself well, taking perfectly (obviously) framed shots along the way. Figures, him being an architecture major with a concentration in film. Someone’s gotta have the eye here. We meet the president of the Comedor. We talk to nice people. We find out that even if you live across the street from dozens of Aportes houses, there’s a high possibility that you don’t know their name. We find out that the word Broccoli is easier to pronounce that Brooke’s name. Someone gave Aportes a 20 outta 20 which indicates they’re outta this world. Oh, and we find another NGO. That was big. Well, it’s a church. El Shaddai, the evangelical one that Juan attends, has been the entry point for many of churches from the Untied States and many other countries. Juan also says (as we type) that on the fourth day, trucks showed up with blankets, jackets, and water. But the work happening now to build these anti-seismic brick models has been founded by these foreign churches as well as constructed with their help. Oh, and Pirata got into two more fights where he was out-numbered. But as expected, he remains unscathed and smugly victorious.

In class, we saw the results. Apparently, according to Adam’s theory, it doesn’t matter who you are. If you have a camera, it becomes your face. It is in the mind of the people. Where will this footage go. Why are people interested in my opinion. Who else is going to see what I say in this very moment. I think I need to choose my words very carefully and make sure not to step on the nails that are surely just around the corner. And this is how they came out. Personal opinion, the most interesting shots were from the prompt, “where is the place that most represents your town to you, why?” We got more varied responses for this one than the others. But there were many houses demonstrated to the camera as the icon of the word “reconstruction.” There were many thank yous to the NGOs. There were many many shots of the church in Manco Capác. We also talk about dates for our last class and screening, ask them to think about, and discuss going to Pisco for the earthquake’s anniversary. Any of us “professors” would have been sound asleep after two and half hours of this sort of fooling around if we had been students in our students’ shoes.

And they were cool with the assignment. In fact, they ran out into the streets immediately after receiving it to go ask people about their opinions about NGOs. They even seemed determined to make funny videos of each other dancing and singing about NGOs. A boring topic turned on its head by simple competition. But what we find out is that there are many people who will decline to be interviewed and many more with mouthfuls of positive, non-constructive things to say. In short, we might have been able to get better footage than they did simply because we knew what sorts of questions to ask from our previous practice. But people would decline to be interviewed because they thought we were with an NGO (and why wouldn’t they since we are teaching in a community center put up by an NGO?). Unfortunately, they seemed more interested in just checking off the squares as tasks to complete rather than thoughts to think in. Of course, there were the exceptions, but for the most part, the footage was endlessly familiar shots of people saying thank you or that the earthquake was “very very bad.” But nothing more of detail.

Delicious food as always for dinner and then back into bed for another few hours before the early morning calls us.



8 Saturday August, 2009
“Apple Ops¨

Sprint workouts are shorter and more fun – but sand is slow. Pecks and triceps day put the cherry on top of the cake.

Our class today starts at 5pm. We have also committed to having office hours open to the students from 2 to 5pm., so we need to eat lunch before then – easier blogged than done. Lunch is a guiso of this new vegetable thing so no one wants to leave without fully enjoying that.

We make it over there though, and no one really shows up until 4pm – kinda what we expected. This gives us time to dedicate to brainstorming and discussing how our project in general is going and think about how we might shape our documentary. We spend an hour or so discussing how we see our trip playing in, our personal travel, into the documentary. Malu shows up at 4:15pm to show us her video showing a typical morning in her life. As we sit down to watch her shots and put them into a quick video, she sits down with a few sheets of paper and draws out a post-filming story board. We let her know this is totally not necessary, especially since storyboarding is meant to be a planning tool, but she sheds our advice, saying she likes to draw.

Cool.

Speaking of cool, Malu´s shots are done incredibly well. She apologizes for not being able to film her dad, saying he broke a rib yesterday and is in the hospital. We´re pretty sure her video skills of placement of camera to film herself were put to good use, tho. In short, she caught us off-guard with how well done her shots were. She had a great shot of her sweeping, then the whole process of making a sopa a la minuta (soup) starting a wood fire (personal favorite), filling it with water, chopping up vegetables and then of course a bowl of the finished product.

Backtracking before lunch, Adam plays with bikes and tools, and Brooke spends the time printing off things for the class – we´ve made a Connect 4 game/worksheet for the kids in which they have to do at least 4 of the 16 filming options we made up for them. Each of these tasks had something to do with NGOs or reconstruction, etc. Basically this was our way of testing the waters to gauge their interest in this whole NGO evaluation thing using youth participatory video. Will they be cool with it? Will they like/enjoy it? Will the community be overwhelmed by it? Will they find out things we couldn´t have found ourselves? Will they learn new things about these topics that will pique their interest? Will they be interested in the topics or in the prizes more? (Yes we are giving them prizes – our assumption is we should ease them into the more boring/academic topic of interviewing using questions centered on NGOs).

Anyways, the kids take it in stride. They totally seem to be into it, we think, we guess, we hope. The three prizes we set up are for:
1. The most interesting/informative
2. The most artistic
3. The most different filming options completed
4. The most fun

We take input for what prizes the students would like and this was a list of some responses:
Chanfaina (soupy potatoes and meat and vegetable dish)
Soda
Chocalate cake with Pecans
Chocotejas (chocalatey pecans)
Sweet breads

We´ll see what we end up deciding – we told them we would decide by next Thursday.

While the kids run around interviewing and planning for how they will complete their connect 4, one of us chases behind different pairs and films them. And then there is the filming option of filming some other group doing their task. So, basically at any given time, there might be 3 or more cameras all filming in a circle.

Are we using the kids? Are we misusing the kids?

And suddenly Gabe showed up. He found his own way to our house and from there was led down to the schoolhouse. Chilling, he meets the kids as they return from there scavenger hunt. Then we sit down to critique their films on their “typical day in the life of..”. Gabe integrates in smoothly and begins offering critique right away. Meanwhile a couple teenage girls in the corner begin sneaking video of Gabe, giggling. When we ask them what they are doing they turn as red as Peruvian girls can get and claim to not be doing anything. Sure…

After class, we head home for dinner. Everyone has eaten already since we are coming back so late. We split up the food and chow down, settle Gabe in a bit, exchange life-altering accounts of daily life, organize footage, draw a bit, and blog.