Tuesday, 18 August 2009

We’ve planned a whole lot for our final event on Friday. Things are going really smoothly. We have about 6 confirmed NGO representatives coming, we are visiting the municipality of La Tinguiña tomorrow to invite them personally as well as some from Ica proper, the electronics are almost all sorted out, and we’ve even posted 10 signs all over the town in key locations. Four of our 10ish students have small flyers to pass out and it looks like we even have permission to use a local tienda to host the event. The kids agreed to each bring a piece of wood, a bucket of water, and some sugar so that we can make coffee for the attending audience.

Everything’s ready. Except for the kids’ movies. Uh oh.

So today we have dedicated most of our hours to helping to kids edit by commenting on their order, their aesthetic eyes as well as ways to make their movies really demonstrate their message. We’ve heard that Peruvians aren’t really open to critique, but they seem to be taking it well.

At 6:00 am, Señor Lopez is tearing down the fence to re-do it with fresh Cincha reeds.

At 7:00am, a cocoon is shed.

At 7:30am, tea is boiled and quaker is already on the table. Both go cold.

At 8:00am, we are half sleeping and half reviewing the raw footage that Pamela has to work with.

At 8:30am, we are pulling out our hair, but partially still inside the warmth of our beds.

At 8:55am, we are packing our breakfasts to go in plastic bottles and tapas.

We start early at 9am with Pamela who is doingher own video in her own house with her own editing program called Pinnacle. Her father sometimes takes pictures and photos at birthday parties which she then puts together for a digital scrap book. At some point she demonstrated one of her projects for us. She has to have a mountain of patience to stare at fifteen year olds in dresses throwing on smiles all day long for cameras during their party. I definitely could not do it.

Pamela and Yubi have put together something that they think encompasses their message. We notice that they have the takes they did during the scavenger hunt as well as some footage from a few days after the earthquake that her dad took. Their message is that there has been a lot of help from NGOs and partially from the government, but that more is needed. They set out to make contrasts between those who have received aid and those who have not. We suggest that since they have an ideal group (one with aid and one without out), they might be able to demonstrate this message better by doing a tour and explanation of their respective living situations. Pamela tells us that she doesn’t want to be another person asking for help because there is still needs everywhere in the South, but this sparks a new idea for everyone. Since they can get footage of their house, their community, and a bit of pictures to represent the Ica department, they will be able to demonstrate that the video that they’ve made is just a small part of a much, much larger picture. Their movie will be a just one case study of thousands in the affected departmento. Cool. We will meet back with you at 4pm to do that.

We wish her good luck with her movie and meet with Malú to ask about her speakers. Returning things to Ica will be a large pain in taxi or by bike so we are trying to avoid it all together. They work just fine. Check. Now just gotta ask the dueño.

Then we clean bicycles all day. Every inch so that we can sell them back to Peru. The water is dirty, the rags are retired, and our fingers ache from the sparkling goodness of our well-used transports. The mountains in the background, under the sun, seem extra sharp today. Like sharp cheddar.

At 4pm, we check in with Pamela again at Yubi’s house. Yubi gets ready to do her takes, but by the time she is on the edge of beginning to record in groups, her mother gives the stern orders to finish her essay. You can play tomorrow, little one. So mostly what gets done here is a recap of the morning for Yubi and even more planning. Hopefully the drafting and redrafting of this documentary of theirs will really show the work and time they’ve been putting in for their final showing.

Add in a trip to the store and more bike cleaning (basta, ¡ya están!) before our next meeting at 6:30 with Carlos and Alison. We pass by people flying kites.. okay, trying to fly kites, on our way over. It’s a beautiful sunset today.

Carlos and Alison aren’t there yet, but Brayahan stomps over with his camera as well as Elaine’s camera. He’s says, “I wanna make a movie.” Wow. So we wait for Alison, Carlos, and Adam to get there before we hike back to the house. He is a little bit shy with his stuff, more willing to just string videos together rather than plan things out or give the movie intention. We try to prod him along to stick with his original message (Hey community! Be united!) as well as to use his takes to his advantage since he has lots of different places during the second anniversary.

Alison and Carlos storm into the room, accompanied by Adam. It’s a little cramped, people are a little confused about what’s going on, Brooke’s tongue is stuck in her mouth, and computers are sucking up electricity like it’s no one’s business. There are three laptops going at once, and somehow we don’t get a single video finished. It’s okay though.

Dinner time! Delicious “send off soup seconds.” Basil, bean, carrot, meat soupy stuff accompanied by a new type of ahí as well as more beans and more rice from the kitchen of plenty. Ka-bing!

Afterwards, we play around with the kids’ videos, getting ready for our gran exposición on Friday. Cross your fingers and toes.

Monday, 17 August 2009

Today is the big day to finally transfer the difficult art of French toast to the people here who all know how to cook so much more really well without recipes for much more complex things. They must think so poorly of foreigners. Our work with NGOs is put on hold for the time being and we put ourselves in the mindset of thanking some people who have been so kind to us and get to know them better.

Wake up at 6am to start with the pie crusts and the French toast. We make a less-sugar, with apples, cinnamon and oatmeal drink to accompany our breakfast. Chopped fruit and then pear yogurt on top. Delic.

Brooke kills her first mammal today. With her bare hands. When she gets back home, Bonzi’s next. Watch out! (Joking, joking!)

Now its time to prepare cuy (guinea pig) for the lunch at the house. We now have 2 simultaneous lunch invites for amazingly delicious food, but we´ll make it happen. We each kill 1 guinea pig. Well, first you have to catch it crawling around the pen. The mom worries we won´t know how to snap a neck here and there. She is really into speedy cooking, and snapping animals´ necks - something she said her grandma beat into her. Then we tried our hand at snapping a neck. The rodents kick and squirm, then go limp. And they have little rat-like teeth in front. Every time it was “our” turn to kill a cuy, mom grabs the thing from our hands and says, “ no no no. not like that, like this!” At least 3 cuyes go to cuy heaven like this. In the midst, a chicken is killed as well. We’re not sure if the grandma confused it with a cuy or if today is just killing-animals-day.

The grandma jokes and plays with the dead guinea pigs. She makes them dance and tells us that they will haunt us in our dreams. We got some decent footage. Then she goes after the cat and dogs pretending they are next. We got a decent picture.

Then the guinea pigs´ hair must be pulled out. You dip them straight into a boiling pot of water while holding the critters by their hind legs. Your fingers burn trying to take the hair off, and before you know it, you’re basically wearing a sweater of cuy. Then the little guys are cut open and their insides are taken out. The teeth get broken off with the blunt side of the knife, and basically all parts are kept for frying minus the intestines. Then the meat is cut into three pieces – the head, and two sides. Each piece is smothered in garlic and some onion and aji-no-moto and salt and pepper and then fried in bastante oil.

The meat is served with rice and potatoes and they have also made a Minestra soup to go with it. Minestra is a type of bean here. And the soup is made with a Basil base and corn and carrots and potatoes and parsley and large amount of spices. It is green.

Round two of our cooking is the planned lunch in the house of some friends. We come by with enough for 25. We make it. Its exciting. Turns out they are making a huge pot of Carapulcra con su sopa seca, which is much more difficult and time consuming than anything we’ve made today for our families.

Somehow we end up spending 2 hours chatting after and during eating our first lunch which was French toast and its fixings as well as carapulcra and sopa seca – 2 servings each. Then off to our family to enjoy our first cuy meal. We didn’t have to try. The meat is a bit skinny but its delicious. The best part is it cooked very much as is, so you eat the skin off the nails and eat the brain, the eyes. At the dinner table, half of us get heads and everyone gets half a cuy, fingernails and all. Unlike chicken legs, the little meaty pieces still have a bit of hair on them that tickles a bit as you munch away.

Lunch is great, and we are stuffed – more than any other day in Peru. We enjoy an open-faced pie with an excellent base made by Brooke via a recipe they had in the house and bananas and strawberries. She also put together a peach and apple pie that must be good but was left untouched after lunch in the house of our friends. Hopefully they enjoy it.

From there we have a meeting with a couple students to help them edit their videos. They are into fooling around with music more than editing so we don´t push them too hard and they don´t get much done. We rescheduled for tomorrow morning so we hope to get it done then.

These girls, along with two other participants accompanied us to poster the three neighborhoods directly around us. 10 posters. And Brooke made some nice ads for the class that can be handed out. This takes another 2 hours.

How does anything get done around here?

Speaking of which, upon returning home our family demands we eat dinner with them – eating and eating all day long.

Sunday, 16 August 2009

Monday, tomorrowish, we have set aside as the day we cook “American Food” for a handful of people we´ve gotten to know quite well during our time here. We figure this is a good opportunity to buy enough to cook for our family as well. French toast is the ironic choice of American food. We thought about adding crepes to the mix but threw that plan out when Juan went on a three minute explanation of how they make this great thing here and its made like a thin cake and they fry it then put fruits and sugar…

We also promised some fruit pies, and happen to really want to make some oatmeal cookies.

So the after breakfast hours were spent making the calculations for ingredients and creating a shopping list. Unfortunately we don´t know how to make pie crust so we had to look that up upon arrival in Ica. French toast is easy – Adam can do that. Pie crust is few ingredients, but cookies we have no real idea.

We run around for a couple hours in Ica and return with 1.5 kilos of strawberries, 25 bananas, 1 kilo of peaches, three 1 liter bottles of yogurt, .5 a kilo of limes, a lot of butter, 1.5 kilos of flour, molasses instead of syrup, a small pineapple, 2 kilos of apples.

That night we try our hand at cookie making. First ones taste like bread, then a bit like banana bread, then a sugar cookie and then we gave up – for a little while. Juan helped us out and he is a much more sophisticated eater than we are. He would tell us how badly we had made it, Brooke would try and guess how to change it to make it be more representative of a cookie, and Adam happily took advantage of the steady supply of cookies with unique tastes.

We got done late at night and bed.

15 Saturday August, 2009

For some reason, I can't get back to bed. Usually you just step outside to the bathroom, freeze while you're out in the wide open air (sheltered baño), and wipe your feet off at the door before crawling back into your appropriate heating “cacoon.” Don't get me wrong, this takes a lot of mental momentum to get the ball rolling from warm horizontal to cold vertical bodies. Because of the customs of downing a lot of hot-before-bed drinks, we are also accustomed to the urge to rise from a comfortable bed around 3 or 4 am. At first, the urge would beckon and our bodies would respond immediately. You are suddenly awake and have to contemplate the possibility of holding it until morning instead of making the intense weather shift now. But you ask your bladder who retorts with a little squeeze that makes you hop right out from between the covers. Now, our bodies know better than to bother us with something so unimportant, and we get to linger in the warmth uninterrupted until the morning.

But at 5:15, a shout comes through the hallway: “AGUA!” Which jolts us up and out. However, the normally intense water process of filling all the barrels around the house is calm this morning. It's here early so there's no rush to Juan isn't here so we don't have the skills or the knowledge to hook up the pump and pipes to the construction site downstream and into what appears to be a swimming pool. So Abuela just stands around with a hose, filling up haras that I didn't even know existed before today.

We jogged real quick. Some hills. Some flats. Some sprints. Right up until we had to be at the casita waiting for students to arrive with sleepy eyes. Originallly we had planned on Carlos, Pamela, Malu, Cecilia, and Elaine. Sin embargo Carlos was unable to get out of his job grading papers at the university, and Pamela had a mysterious presentation to take care of. So it ended up being just three students and us on our way in colectivo towards Ica. Elaine is 12, Cecilia is 14, and Malu is 26. A wide range of experience and perspective. They are psyched, brought their lunches to-go, and full of spunk. At the bus station, hurried hands push us towards our Flores flight into Pisco where the march will be this morning.

The march is about the lack of reconstruction in Pisco, the most affected town of the department. There's a large list of complaints.

“Para reforzar la seguridad ciudadana se cuentan 2.500 vehiculos nuevos, 5 mil computadoras, pero no hay comisaria en pisco, que hoy en el perú tiene 32 mil millones en reservas pero no hay plata para construir casas para los damnificados, que se han enregado mas de 560 mil titulos de propiedad, pero ninguno a los damnificados de pisco.” Are just a few of them. Basically, Peru's got money but none of it is going towards rebuilding Pisco. Or that what is being spent is being spent on the right things or in the right places.

The last time we were in Pisco, the highway into town from the Cruce was ripped up into pieces. Cars went on detour and bikes lucked out with a lovely little car-less ride to Pisco. We turn the corner and guess what? Partially paved, the 2^nd anniversary of the earthquake looks like a picturesquely progressing roadway. But our microbus only brings us so far because the rest of the tiny streets that would typically lead us in have been stripped of their pavement to install what looks like water systems. Our students immediately whip out their cameras. Malu narrates to the Flip, “We're here today in Pisco to see the march for reconstruction. As you can see here, the roads have been ripped up and many houses have yet to be repaired.” Cecilia and Elaine stick close together, basically taking video of the same thing.

The Plaza de Armas is swarming with marchers who don't seem to be working together. Isolated groups fighting for different things with different messages are circling the center statue shouting things about government, gas companies in the national reserve, and education. We filmed for a mere 20 or 30 minutes before the entire thing was over. Spectators covered every surface of the plaza, seated comfortably watching serenely. Malu, Cecilia, and Elaine ended up making a great team as one asked questions and the others stationed themselves taking two different shots of the interviewed. Afterwards, we ate lunch outside the Ceas church where the first mass was taking place in their new bamboo church. Everyone brought different lunches ranging from french fries, rice, fish, noodles, chicken, adobo, sweet potatoes, and even pallares. Afterwards, we circled around the plaza looking for more shots of the destruction/reconstruction and doing interviews with people who already have houses. And then... we took a taxi to San Andres to check out the beach, buy some fresh fish, and smell around for fresh bread. Right out of the taxi, we realize that no one is selling fish. So we walk into the butcher's shop to figure out the deal. There's a transportation strike today. We already knew this though, and it was just between Pisco and Chincha so no big deal. However, this means our family will be missing out on fruits from the sea.

Instead the girls squeal on over to the beach to collect shells and get sand in their socks. A lot.

Back to the Plaza de Armas to check out the action before we wrap up this field trip. There's not much going on though, so we continue onwards to the Cruce to buy our Soyuz ticket. But... there's a strike. And as far as the eye can see, there are cars buses trucks double deckers taximotos and people backed up. But we promised to get them home by 4 and it's past 3.

Taxi for 20 soles each? It only cost us 4 to get here! Okay, how about 10? Ummm... 45 for all five of you. And then our salvation of a combi comes. A bus that typically runs between San Clemenete and Pisco decides to reroute and take advantage of the strike by now doing runs between Pisco and Ica. 8 soles a piece. Not bad.

By the time we get back to Manco Capac, everyone is exhausted. But we have optional class today for consultations on editing and planning their final videos. We chilled for an hour with the family to let them know we're still alive. Adam ate a huge piece of cinnamon stick. Brooke inhaled some rice like there was no tomorrow. And we chatted about how sometimes eating things out of a mug is a really nice portion and feeling.

Then back to the casita where there is a game of volleyball happening. We split up, staking out the house and sending someone off to check on Pamela's formatting job. In the end, Adam plays volleyball while Brooke scribbles along with some students to make posters for our final event. Then we hit up the keepers of La Capilla (church) to see if we can get our foot in the door to host our event there. It's well known. It's not affiliated with any NGO. It's on the Manco Capac side. Unlike the Casita which is small, built by Aportes, yet central. We're not entirely sure how to get both communities to come to the same place. We'll consult Yngrid, our Aportes friend who is an expert on the locale.

Somehow, we get home where Juan has been waiting to eat. We tuck in food while watching a part of Girl with a Pearl Earring. Next stop: figure out a plan to stay awake while blogging at 10:30pm

14 Friday August, 2009

-Get water from well. Take amazing video shots.

-Do laundry while husking corn.

-Eat lunch of corn, think about how darn late it got.

-Talk with Carlos about his movie. Download and get shown up by his mad computer science skills.

-Chat and chat with the Woman's Group

-And we learn about some up and coming projects in an organizational meeting held by the president of Manco Capac

-Somehow, we end up with an interview on Sunday with a woman who knows what's what about Cáritas which is perfect.

-Pensively decide not to go to the midnight demonstration in Pisco

-Pensively decide instead to work late and hit up the blankets early

13 Thursday August, 2009

It's almost midnight, and here we are again, thinking about making oatmeal cookies. We bought a massive amount of oatmeal for the family this morning for making quaker as well as a bag of flour yesterday to make vegetable tortillas. However, we both blink our eyes and let our contacts slide as we stare down our respective computers doing our respective jobs of typing the blog and naming footage.

We just came back from our consultation hours with our students in the Casita. Pamela (our editing expert) came to simply come. We would have worked more with her footage, however we are short on a MPEG-2 converter that needs to be purchased from Mac since it is apparently patented by someone who probably never thought the technology would be needed right here and right now in Peru with these kids. Twenty bucks? Twenty BUCKS?! Really, people, apple is running a scam here making my OS obsolete every few years and taking all of my programs with it. iMovie is awful. So awful. So is the em-pehg-two formatting of our camera. Damn that camera.

Cecilia and her partner are there, but Malú is playing a game of volleyball where the stakes are high. Cincuenta centimes to each of the winners. However, Malú and Ceci have taking more shots since we met yesterday which indicates more progress towards their completed video.

Brahayan and Elaine, our youngest two students, are still at a stand-still and are super busy with school. We suggest that maybe they should join other groups, make their movie about something else, or take the footage from Pisco that we are going to be recording this upcoming Saturday to use for their raw inputs. This is all done as Adam hangs out a window and Brooke squats on the ground surrounded by four pensive students. They decide that maybe they should talk with their parents one more time to see if they can get one of them to say yes if we cover their tickets to and from Pisco. In any case, their message is to tell their community that they should be more united. Maybe if they show what’s happening in the Caserio Manco Capác and Señor de Luren compared to Pisco’s march, they can show that some places have come together to make a statement.

Staring at them play volleyball…

Before this, we had been crawling around the neighborhood at a record slow speed trying to do surveys. Adam’s idea was to do random encuestas around the town to see how fast the news of our class has been spreading, especially given the last assignment which involved people running around with their video cameras recording all that they could about the reconstruction. Our results is that although a majority of our class is from Manco Capác, only ¼ of our sample knew about the class. Señor de Luren (of which we technically have 1.5 students – one student has a house in each. One with her grandparents and the other with her mother) has a sample of 3/7s people who know about the class. We have yet to pin point whether distance from the Casita correlates to knowing about the class.

Before we do our encuestas though, we encounter a group of women cooking a very large pot (think the size of a pot that could boil Brooke whole) of what appears to be hot chocolate. Which it is. And it smells good. Vaso de Leche is a partially government funded organization that tries to make sure that every night, every kid gets a good glass of milk in them. The people are gathered around the pot, chatting as some of them lean over to push more wood under the Goliath. Just down the way, a few houses next door, there is another group of people who are just taking advantage of what’s left of the sun.

My forearms hurt from typing so much at once.

Before surveys, we were so lucky to encounter some homemade Chaunfainita boiling in a pot as we arrived from La Tinguiña where we were messing around with our Mac to see if we could get it working to transform MPEG2s to AVI. Additionally we rode our bikes there to enjoy the daily dose of tanning, dust-in-the-eyes, and exercise. We happened upon a bike repair shop at which we asked about prices to re-sell our well-used steeds.

We are old people and start falling sleep while typing at only 10:40 pm. A rooster crows. He is confused and sounds almost as if he is inside the house. Mostly because he is. At least, there is a window that opens to the house that is shared with his cage.

Our alarm went off around 4:50 this morning. We planned on working out before helping with the water. Instead, Adam managed to bench Brooke’s weight. Well, actually she crawled up in a ball and he just benched her. Then abuelita called us out of bed and onto our feet and into duty to distribute water from here to there and there and there. Today, we prepared too much food for the amount of people that are actually home and want to eat. In fact, we made so much that we couldn’t finish it for lunch or dinner. This morning: sweet potatoes, rice, tortillas of vegetable, hot chocolate, and bread with guanabana jelly inside. Then off to visit a little old lady and Pamela. One to interview about the history of Manco Capac and the other to check on some different formatting possibilities.

12 Wednesday August, 2009

Today was a day of should-have-beens. Instead of blogging, let me list the ways the day should have been. Then you can decide if our normative, idealistic thinking is out of line.

1. The water should have come today at 6:00 a.m. We were ready for it, even working out early so that we could be present for the fiasco. It wasn't here by 7. It wasn't here by 8. In fact, it never showed.
2. Gabe should have had a bus ticket for Cusco for 1:00, but instead he is delayed a few hours.
3. There should be some sort of written history or something existing on this place we're staying in, but there really isn't. We're finding this out slowly and painfully as we start to cross off all of our possible leads.
4. We should be doing surveys so that we can have some sort of raw data of demographics within the NGO information realm when we return. Instead, we are invited to play soccer and volleyball.
5. This blog should be longer, but we are running out of words in both languages to describe our experience.

The end.

11 Tuesday August, 2009

Today we are scheduled to visit every single one of our students. One-by-one. We have 8 active students. We have a 75% success rate of encountering our class. We just miss out on 2 people. One because it is too late and the other because he lives too far away. The entire process is very complicated because

A. People live in different neighborhoods

B. Have different schedules depending on what grade they're in (Some go to school in the morning, others in the afternoon, and others in the noche).

C. People are in different stages of their videos (and of their lives)

D. Depending on their age, they have very different thinking capacities for imagining how the final project will be and what steps are needed to move towards it.

E. We have to talk to them about several things. The editing process, our fieldtrip to Pisco on Saturday, fixing the final dates for our screening, and a class evaluation. Not only do they have to fill it out, they also need to respond to a camera with their answers for the evaluation.

In our first pass, Malu is busy. Come back at 3. Our second pass uncovers something incredible: an edited video that includes several (if not all of the) takes from our Connect4 scavenger hunt. Pamela has already completed her homework of having a draft put together. She has a twenty minute video that she and Yubi worked on for two hours to put together within two days of having shot the footage. Her turn over is amazing. Unfortunately, her plot seems rather random, her footage is still intact (as in, she left every take whole) without sacking the useless information within each take, and the entire thing is incredibly long for saying very little. Let's take a step back: second video of intent and message that she's ever done. Therefore, we are on a roll. With a little more planning and thought, her editing skills can be put to good use to throw together something quick for the final screening. We tell her that maybe her video can stand as a backbone for the other videos since she has the capacity to import several videos as well as stitch them together in a fairly timely fashion. This would be ideal seeing as we would like to consider it THEIR video rather than a collaboration between us and the students. We sort of leave a few questions for her to ask herself and Yubi: what do you want your message to be? Who is this message to? What point of view do you have that no one else in your community has? And after 2 hours, we leave. Side note: we also find out that it is going to be innnnnnncredibly difficult to change our flight tickets. Difficult like a couple thousand dollars difficult. Right. No.

Next comes Malu. We ask her to take a look at what takes she already has and to choose the shots that she thinks best relate to her message and audience. She picks up on our game quickly and SNAP! Lika flash of light, she is rearranging small index cards to set up a storyboard for her footage. She fills in some blanks and decides that she'll take this footage later. We say ALRIGHT! And that we'll pass the message onto her project partner etc etc. Her message? That there is a lot of work from the NGOs here, none from the government, and that the help has been a lot but not enough to really bring things back to par. She also wants to point out that in a lot of cases, there are people receiving aid who don't need it but are in favor of a government or friends with someone on the ladder. Points for Malu.

Then we hit up Brahayan (sounds like Bryan) to shoot the sand. His message is unclear. His grandmother talks to us a lot about witches who used to live here. His footage is apparently insufficient to create anything of significance, and he is out of ideas. Soooo we say that we'll talk to his project partner to check if she's got some things to say and get back to ,him.

Then we play duck duck goose with the rest of our students. Elaine isn't there. Cecilia is, but she has to get all dolled up before she can meet with Malu. We have ten minutes to bring her back before it gets dark. Go. The group talks. Elaine isn't there. We try to convince Cecilia's mom that the field trip will be a great lesson. Cecilia goes back home. Elaine is there, but now Bryan can't meet cause it's too late. And then there's Alison. But it's too dark and she has to think and Carlos and her can't meet until Friday any ways so then we decide that we should just head back home cause it's late and no one probably wants to talk to us anymore cause we're always on their cases. Or something like that.

Oh yeah, then we went to bed.

10 Monday August, 2009

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

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 Saturuday 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.