This is a change of pace - a true travel story! Enjoy! 

 

When one does things from altruistic motives, one has to accept that not all will be smooth sailing, that there will be some deprivation, some discomfort. There comes a point where sometimes you merely feel that while it’s alright to be doing Meals on Wheels or helping out at the school fete, you get an itch to do something big, to do something worthwhile to make a difference.  At least that's the theory. 

 

This was the reason I'd gone to Peru to volunteer.  My daughter declared :

 

"Mum's gone into her “Save the World Mode”, rolling her thirty-something eyes.

 

I'd been up to Macchu Picchu ten years before hoping for enlightenment, and been disappointed – it was impossible to find a quiet spot among the hordes of tourists, jabbering away in Dutch, German or English.  The ruins were amazing though. Those ancients had even created their own sundial and had a beautifully functioning society before it was all taken over by the Spaniards, who imposed their own kind of civilisation.

 

Now, after a long flight from Australia, I was on a bus, snaking along mountainous roads where all I could see from the window as we sped by was an arid and parched landscape, tiny land-locked villages and tin shanties, snotty nosed kids, assorted mangy dogs - they made me wonder what I was getting into.  Seven boring hours on the bus, only relieved by the hostess who organised a jolly game of bingo in Spanish.  I barely knew the numbers to ten but decided to have a go anyway.  Needless to say, I didn't win, but when I found out what the prize was, I was relieved.  The winner had to make a speech about how great the bus company was and extol their superior comfort and services.  Everyone clapped as the winner made his speech. 

 

I wasn't prepared for the cold that enveloped me when I almost fell off the bus, the last two steps too steep for my numb legs.  Luckily, Ricardo, a short stocky man with a ready grin who had organised the entire stay in Huancayo, a sizeable town of more than two hundred thousand, met me, waving a swaying cardboard sign with my name spelled incorrectly and hustled me on to the office, where I was relieved of several hundred dollars and the books I had brought for the children.  I was surprised there was such a rush to get this part of the transaction over with, especially since it was 10 o'clock at night. I never saw those books at the school.

 

“Now, I will take you to your homestay.” He said, hailing a rickety taxi, barely held together with prayers and a dangling crucifix from the rear view mirror.

 

We bumped along dark potholed streets and he finally deposited me at my homestay.  My heart sank when I saw how far away from the town proper it was.  A cloud of dust flew up as we shuddered to a halt in front of a reasonably large house.  I was introduced to the parents, Gloria and Emilio and their two daughters, Silvana and Raquel, who spoke a little English. I wondered why they all had parkas on, until I got inside.  The house was freezing – I shivered in my inadequate jumper and jeans.  

 

I was being welcomed over and over and as I tried to make sense of what they were saying, responding in my fractured Spanish, my eyelids became heavy with the anticipation of sleep.  Eventually I was able to indicate to them that I was really tired and would appreciate going to bed early, but I still ended up almost falling over before I was allowed to go upstairs.  Although the bed was lumpy and dusty, sleep claimed me almost immediately – sheer exhaustion.

 

My home stay family were charming but could be volatile.  There were often loud disagreements, but then they hugged.  Having very little Spanish beyond “Si” and basic vocabulary, I pretty much said yes to everything. The first thing I said Si to was an invitation to their god-daughter's wedding.  I was thrilled to be asked, looking forward to some fantastic rustic food and quaint country customs.

 

At about 5 am, I awoke to a lot of yelling and screaming, and doors being slammed.  I just lay there.  Perhaps the old man had had a heart attack or there'd been a burglary or something. I could hear machines, more yelling. I must have dozed off for a while, when there was a loud rap at the door. 

 

‘Apresurate, vamos tarde!’

 

The mother, brandishing a hair dryer, was telling me to get up and get ready.  She had been transformed into a diva in purple satin, with matching eye shadow and mauve lipstick and the girls, hair piled high and lacquered, had been squashed into tight shiny bodices and stilettos.  They actually all looked quite charming, in an early Eighties kind of way.

 

After the church, we headed off to the reception, in an enormous almost empty hall.  Miles of shiny white tiles covered the floor.  It was freezing, so I just shuddered and drew my jacket more closely to my chest, practically strangling myself with my scarf.

 

The bridal party and around two hundred guests finally arrived two hours later. While the tiny four foot eleven bride, covered in lace and satin and her dark eyed groom, with glossy slicked back hair, beamed at us, what followed were numerous speeches.  Not one, but two twenty-four piece bands played loud dissonant music. 

 

‘Nice music?’ Raquel smiled.

 

I smiled back.  The wedding gifts, rather than being decorously displayed on a table, were paraded through the hall. This was a sight to behold. The entire contents of a house - fridges, stoves, microwaves, a giant four poster bed, piles of towels, sheets, tablecloths - were carried into the reception by teams of short muscular Peruvian men.   I spent the next hours standing in the still arctic hall, while everyone got drunker and drunker on beer served in plastic cups.  After taking a few gulps, they blithely threw the contents over their shoulders.  Some sort of weird custom, I figured.  The result was that we were literally skating on beer.  It was hard enough to keep your balance and then they wanted me to join in their dancing too! 

 

It was close to midnight and the evening was going swimmingly, literally, because of the lake of beer we were standing in.  Suddenly I found myself in the middle of an altercation.  There was shouting, I wondered if perhaps an insult I couldn’t understand had been made - and then there was retaliation.  Fists were flying, and Ricardo was trying to keep me out of the melee. Once again, he bundled me into a taxi with the daughters and I was left wondering what was going on.  When we got home and I prepared for bed, the front door closing made me look out the window to see Raquel sneaking back down the road.  Perhaps the melee had involved her boyfriend and she was going to extricate him?  Who knew?  The parents arrived back in their ancient Toyota an hour later.  By that time I had tried to get to sleep several times, but didn’t get up.

 

The next morning, breakfast consisted of hot fruit juice – even though I was still cold, I couldn’t come at that.  This was followed by a soup – strange looking and even stranger tasting.  At this rate, I could drop those few extra pounds easily.

 

Remember that Si? Now we were off to view yet another presentation of the wedding gifts – this time at the home of the just married couple.  Far from being starry eyed newlyweds, they had been together several years and had a couple of children.  We sat outside, again in the bitter cold, and watched the exact same procession of whitegoods on strong Peruvian shoulders, go around and around in their backyard, while soup and meat roasted on outdoor grills.  It was numbingly cold, sitting out there, but luckily I managed to get myself practically glued to one of the outdoor ovens, ostensibly looking after the meat, watching it turn and sizzle.  I didn’t like to ask what it was, as it might have been guinea pig, a delicacy in the region I had not yet sampled. It tasted like chicken.

 

That afternoon Ricardo arrived at the house and after a whispered conference with the parents, said he was moving me to another homestay.  He didn’t give me a reason, but I guessed it had something to do with the dust-up at the wedding.

 

This too, was an average looking house – suburban and ordinary.  There was a mother, Ana and her son Alfonso – he spoke quite good English – but there was a palpable sense of sadness about the mother and it wasn’t until a few days later that I realised why – she had lost her older son tragically two years before – in unfortunate circumstances as I was later to discover.  

 

On Sunday we went out to the cemetery. Ana was beside herself, putting flowers on the pristine grave that overlooked the town.  I didn’t quite know what to do - it seemed like such a private moment and here I was sharing it – a middle-aged stranger from Australia come to teach English. She told me that the son had been pushed from a third storey balcony - she said it was no accident - by one of his best friends, who apparently was jealous of him.  She said the police had no interest in investigating, because the other boy’s parents were wealthy and influential in the town.  I didn’t know what to think.  Here I had a little room at the back of their house – it was nice and private but the water supply was erratic, so I had to time my showers and washing to when I thought it might be available, usually before two pm. Hot water was rare, and I found myself washing my smalls and re-wearing other clothes.  

 

The first day I went out to the “school”- a tiny concrete hut with a dirt floor. Hopeful toothless grandmothers lined up outside, eagerly pushing their grandchildren forward.  The children were cramped in, all ages, all sizes, keen to learn English, sitting on the floor.  I wanted to do something, so I bought a couple of dozen plastic tables and chairs. The kids were lovely and eager to learn. 

 

I went out there every day on the local bus and was always shocked to see open drains like small rivers everywhere, with plastic bags and rubbish floating along. The wonky footpaths in the town were treacherous, too, and you could easily fall into a hole if you weren’t careful. One day there was a loud workers demonstration threading through the streets.  I started talking to one of the participants in a combination of sign language and fractured Spanish. She told me these protests were a common occurrence but hardly any reform ever came about. She shrugged her shoulders and said “corruption”.

 

I lasted a few weeks, but was incredibly lonely as I was the only foreigner in the programme at that time. So I left to go back home, stopping off in Los Angeles where a friend I had met several years before at the Hollywood Bowl let me sleep on her lumpy futon while I waited for a flight home. The world of difference between those two worlds! An entrepreneur, she took me to the Beverley Hills Hotel to meet her friends, then stopping off at Trader Joe’s for a two dollar bottle of wine, we went to a party.  Her cat prowled around me all night and the garish fishbowl light kept going on and off, so it was with eyes practically hanging out of my head that I boarded that Qantas flight for home. Si!