Mazac, Peru: many happy returns

With great haste I rushed through Central and South America, eager to return to the mountain village of Mazac, in Peru, where I had lived and served as a Peace Corps volunteer. As I got closer to Peru, and upon staging my return to the mountains from the coastal city of Tumbes, I realized that I had very much made this journey in order to return to Mazac. The contents of my backback as much as my brain were all chosen and packed and carried to arrive at this destination. Travelling alone for 5 weeks, and seeing so much at such a velocity, I would need to set down my backpack, to remove the smelly clothes and broken walkman, to unpack my heart and to open it up again to the family that had taken me into their home for two years.

After finishing my Peace Corps service in 2005, I had returned once, in 2007. During that time, I stayed with another volunteer who was then serving in Mazac. That was an easy landing- to share the experience with an American who is also a great friend. Returning this time feels very different- totally on my own account, with no attachment to Peace Corps or any other institution, except my own memory.

In this experience I am conscious of every connection I have to that village, to each individual household and person and dog. I am independent of any project greater than my own and it´s wonderful and free and scary. Peace Corps gave me some of the richest relationships I´ve had in my life, but it also limited my relationships here. That massive US organization suspends its agents in air, with their feet scraping the country´s ground and their arms clinging to the enormous American political and economic umbilical cord. As a volunteer I never quite stood on my own two feet. Here, now, I am standing on my own feet, with no safety oversight from Lima, no doctors, no work plans and no stipend. I´m here on my own account and I feel strong and grown up and powerful.

This is all fancy wording for papa picchu and day hiking and fleas and diarreah. Nor was my arrival any great revelation.

To arrive on Saturday, February 13, 2010, is the result of some very precise planning- I had wanted to be in Mazac for Carnavales, five years since I cut down and replaced the ceremonial tree. My visit would be a total surprise, and I would return happily to whatever Mazac held for me.

Coming up from the coast, I disboarded in Huaraz at 7 am and took pineapple and carrot juice and an egg sandwich at FrutiFruttita, aka Juice Mister, the little juice shop of the frutioferta and the frutidesayuno and the bad math and the likely source of many a stomach bug. Here as volunteers we attempted to replentish valuable minerals lost constantly during campo living. Back at Juice Mister again, I armed myself with protein and vitamins, knowing that Mazac would have little of either.

Then I bought instant Nescafe and Milo and cheese from Chiquian and bread for my family. Loaded with my purchases, a combi rattled my bones from Huaraz to Yungay and on disboarding, I felt terror at the familiar faces whose names I can´t remember, scurrying about the Yungay market. I paid a cab up to Mazac. Still morning, people were working and going about their business and I quietly entered my old home. The dogs recognized me and didn´t bark or bite. No one was home. I ran down to Isidoro´s chacra. There I found Isidoro, or Ichi, or Ichicho, father of the family, scraping weeds from his lettuce. His wife, Cirila, to be known here as Shilly, and their children, Norly and Lenin, sat in the shade nearby. Norly is now about 12, the middle child, strange and dark and always laughing creepy laughter. Lenin, known to me as Shubi, has been previously introduced. He is my godson. He is 8, the perfect age, and loves to hunt for doves and play with cars. It takes time for him to remember me but we are fast friends.

I am in Mazac, home, sort of.

My arrival is totally anticlimactic. We give ourselves those distant campo hugshakes. I try to close the hugs tighter but it´s a cultural thing. No one is surprised at my arrival. They are even less surprised to learn that I travelled by car from Oregon to Peru. Of course I travelled by car. You know, pasando Panama Canal, más allí abajito es. We go to the kitchen and I present my grand gesture- the nescafe and milo and cheese, totalled worth two days wages. We happily eat boiled potatoes and white rice and a fried egg. I eat as much hot pepper as I can get my hands on. Four years have passed since we last sat and ate and Absolutely. Nothing. Has. Changed.

Except that the children are bigger, and Ketty, the oldest daugther, has moved to Matacoto. This means that she´s a Jovencita now, that she dances with men and drinks beer at parties. Also she will be pregnant any day now; I can only imagine the terror in her father´s heart.

I am glad to be back. After lunch they have work to do and I am exhausted so I sleep for two hours in my old room. My sleep is violent and sweaty and full of crazy dreams- I do not wish ever to sleep in this room again; it is too intense. And it is the family´s room now. They sleep in a big pile on my old bed. I cannot stay here, in this room.

When I wake, Isidoro is busy accomodating a new room for me. The crops have done well and he has added two rooms to his home with the idea that children can sleep in their own rooms and if the Abuela visits, she will sleep in a bed instead of the kitchen. However, these things will never happen. This family has always slept in a big pile, the two adults and three children. Until the children have partners, I believe they will always stay in the pile. Likewise, the abuela has always slept in the kitchen. In her own home, there is a space for guinea pigs in her bedroom, simulating the kitchen´s sound. She will always sleep in the kitchen. Happily for me, this means I will always sleep in my own room in Mazac.

Isidoro runs a line of electricity from the house to my room. He does so by splicing the live wires- as he works great bolts of electricity escape and spark at his hands. I retreat several feet with every blast. After several attempts at different ports, he successfuly connects the light in my room to the overhead light. This means that whenever the house is lit, until the last person goes to bed, my room´s light will be on. I am grateful for electricity but less so for the prospect of sleeping with full light on nights when Chinese telenovelas keep Norly up long past my bedtime.

It gets dark and we pile into the kitchen and sit along a log, talking, catching up. Shilly serves us veggie and noodle soup. I love this soup. She serves along with hot pepper and lemon, and it´s principal flavors are cilantro and tomato. It is one of few reliable, normal things in my life here. Lunch is a battle, part of a larger war that is won and lost in the letrines. But dinner, this soup, is a regular source of calm, rest and nourishment. It tastes exquisit after all the travel. After dinner, I retire to my room, my thoughts racing with the observation of my return, taking the whole thing in again- my heart pounding from altitude and recall. I stare up at the light, the moths fluttering against it, and the larger, ominous bugs lurking in the corners of the ceiling, waiting, like me, for the light to switch off so that they might feast and I might sleep.