California, Here I Come!!!

It is definitely time for me to go home. 10 days was a long time and I'm ready to be back in a familiar place again. There has been real pleasure interspersed with all the challenges of being here. Last evening I announced to the students, "Es un gusto para mi estar nuevamente con ustedes." They broke into wild applause. (It is with pleasure that I meet with you again today). Simple things go a long way. I sat with a young student on the bus last night, who paid her way here by selling "blankets" at the side of the road. She was only able to sell one but that only made enough for her to get here. This student came by just now bringing bed linens. Apparently, she didn't know the word for sheets and this is what she is selling. She is a student most worthy of help and if I get something in return, that's frosting on the cake. Now she has money for food while she is here plus the trip back to Ecuador next week.

My food has been problematic here. The first three days it was so salty that my ankles swelled up. I asked for rice and beans without salt. I got some sort of meat that had been soaked in salt water. They probably didn't add any salt, so they felt they had honored my request. But it almost puckered me up, it was so salty. The smell of the hot milk product that comes in a white little pitcher, makes me gag every morning (I keep sniffing it, hoping it's something other than what it is--a soy-goat milk-sewage smelling product). One morning I was served something that I labeled "Jellyfish guts." It was a large bowl of clear slime. I know no other way to describe it. It was translucent clear something or another. I turned off my brain and eyes, and ate it. Not bad, but I probably would never ask for seconds. After my mad dash to the hospital, I've been served bland food in small amounts, twice a day. It's okay--I can drop probably 30 lbs and be just fine. And I would, should I live here much longer. My clothes already fit better than when I came.


Yesterday's morning's menu consisted of tea, slimy, watery oatmeal and 8 saltine crackers. Yum. Last night's supper was red jello, cream of green mystery soup, and 3 slices of white bread. The cook seems determined that I eat lemon marmalade on something, as I keep getting it in all sorts of disguised ways on my tray: in a jar, in a cup, spread over the bread, etc. It smells like a petroleum product. But what takes the cake is the barley in cinnamon vomitus (what it looked like)! As I write, there is a large soup bowl of some orange gruel waiting on my breakfast tray. I can hardly wait to find out what that is! I must say though, my stomach is feeling about 80% back to normal, as long as I don't need to eat everything I'm served.


There is some sort of bird here that screeches in a series of four or five very loud squeals at a time. I don't know if it is someone's pet bird or a bird in the wild. It has been the last sound I hear when I lay down and the first sound when I wake up. If I could meet it out in the open I could truly wring its neck. There is some other bird that makes an odd noise like a male duck--a throaty "wow" sound over and over. He lives outside in the grass somewhere. So these birds' miserable sounds punctuate my days.

The water in the shower is finally tepid, after nine days of bracing, icy showers. I'm not sure what the issue was, but that was quite a beginning to the day. Yesterday morning there was no running water so there was no morning shower. Everyone took it in stride, myself included. I just didn't recognize myself when I looked in the mirror! My hair has been a picture since I arrived and found that I forgot to bring my hairbrush. If I avoid mirrors I do pretty well.
Not to be indelicate, but the toilet is a three-flusher type of fixture that never does what it should. I stand over it, eyes agape, waiting for it to either overflow or do nothing. This is not the kind of thing you want to bother with when you have Montezuma's Revenge.

I'm told it never rains here--never. They only have dew on some mornings but I have yet to see anything like that. So it makes sense that many people live in houses that are full of holes and whose roofs are dilapidated and iffy. The windows in my bathroom here are not sealed and caulked in and I can see daylight around most of them. Why caulk them in if there is no concern of moisture coming through? So when I shut the bathroom door, the windows rattle in their tracks. When the wind blows outside, they rattle. When someone walks in the front door of the dormitory, they rattle.
Incidentally, last night we had a very fine misty sprinkle. People acted like it was a monsoon.


There are some sort of bugs that have been biting me. I don't know if they are a form of no-see-ums or bedbugs or mosquitoes. There was a group of mosquitoes buzzing around my face this morning at 5:30 and kept me swatting and going under the covers for two hours. I keep finding little red marks on my arms and legs. Against my very white skin, I'm sure these polka-dots create quite a picture for the students.

It is time to go home. I am ready. I don't begrudge my time here, but it has been hard to be here alone for all this time, and to be without anyone to talk to consistently has been tough. If Sam were here with me, at least we could be together--although he would be bored silly. I can only think of three people I know who would have enjoyed this adventure. I have tried to take on their chipper, adventurous attitudes while I've been here, roaming about the campus, talking to everyone, asking questions. Were I to act like myself, I'd stay inside my room all the time and only go out if there is a fire in the building. I appreciate the fine example given me of being good, flexible, inquiring travelers.

This campus is in a rural region, an hour's drive from Lima. People are very poor and the homes are rag taggle here. The air quality is horrendous. My host tells me that it is a marine layer, but there is no moisture in it and it smells like exhaust. It doesn't feel exactly refreshing to go walking around the campus breathing deep lungfulls of it. It's worse smog than in Southern California. It has been eye-opening to think of how many people in this world live without the luxury of governmental controls on pollution. I am indeed fortunate.

The faculty here make the princely sum of $400 U.S. every month. Of course, that works out to be about three times as much in Peruvian money. Some of the students are raggedy and it is clear that they are making a huge sacrifice to come to this Christian university. There is a young boy of about 18 years of age who brings me my meals every day. I gave him $20 on Friday and he almost started crying. That clinched it for me. I think the money this school is coughing up to bring me here will go back to them in scholarships for their students. A little goes a long way in this country. This is perhaps the most important feature of the trip. I have realized in new ways how much I do have and how wealthy Americans are in comparison to the rest of the world. I think I can help students get an education here by setting up a scholarship for the family therapy students. That will be a tremendous joy. When I see these little brick hovels with questionable roofs, half-starved dogs lying in the streets asleep, and women washing their clothes in irrigation ditches, I feel guilty about the possibility of Sam and I buying a spacious new home. But I live in America, not Peru, and life goes on.

Even though a real whirlwind of work awaits me at home, I'm looking forward to leaving. I leave with the cheerful and respectful greeting, "Doctora!" ringing in my ears, and with the shy mumbled Spanglish greetings every day. People have tried very hard to be accommodating and they have been very dear. In particular, my host has been very kind.

I've been given a new moral reference point that includes responsibility to the world and those whose lives are very different than mine. And I am ready to go. With a full heart and many things to ponder for days to come.