Getting Charged by Police

Yes it`s been a while since my last post, but I`ve been workin here.

I arrived in Lima in the wee hours of the morning (around 8) and immediately headed for a hostel near the sportsbar I had found during an internet search. The plan was to get a little rest, shower, and head out to watch me Irish take down Purdue. That day I discovered my home away from home. The Corner is much like any sportsbar you`d find in the US, complete with screens around the room and plenty of Americans watching their favorite teams and a Latin American staff that doesn`t speak English. All but a very few of the bar`s customers are Americans. It didn`t take long for me to establish my status as a regular. That, as it turns out, was also the place where I spent the dark, dark day that was November 25.

The following day, I headed over to the house where I would spend the next three months. There were two other volunteers who were just leaving as I arrived. They had been waiting for me, but were about to give up, as the head of the organization had informed them that several people who reserve spots end up not turning up. As it was Sunday and many places were closed, we decided to have lunch at the house. I took a walk to a local tienda with one of them and asked him how he knew the other guy. "We`re partners." Needless to say, I almost croaked.

I spent the next couple of hours finding out just how interesting the situation would be, as his "partner" was more effeminate than Elton John. As it turned out, the two were nice enough, but the American (the one with whom I took the walk to the store was Dutch) frequently went too far in discussing their relationship. What`s more, neither one spoke Spanish, but this didn`t stop them from making the effort. As such, my espanol rapidly deteriorated from listening to them. The combination of these factors made frequent trips to the Corner all the more appealing.

A week later, two friends, one American and one Limey, arrived. They soon became a couple and ended up spending most of their time with the other two. (Don`t ask me how.) The Limey liked kids, but the American chick was concerned only with a photo project. She liked having things completely under her control, so needless to say, we locked horns quite a bit.

As far as the actual work was concerned, only one of the five of us likes kids. Combine this with the fact that it was never made clear to any of us what exactly we were supposed to be doing in the classrooms and it was a reciepe not quite for disaster, but close enough. The NGO is terribly organized, leaving all of us to kind of wing it. We just kind of went to the schools with lunch for the kids and spend the following two hours each day trying to figure out what the best way we could help was.

As there were three schools, we`d divide up. I usually ended up flying solo because it seemed as though having more than one volunteer in that school provided more of a distraction than a help. Going to that school, I had to take an extra hike to pick up four students who really didn`t belong there. They had no interest in studying and, because their parents had no interest in their studies either, were really beyond help. We`d take about a five minute bus ride, then take a walk that should take ten minutes. They usually took twenty to thirty.

Another source of aggrevation was the inaccurate representation of the program that I had seen on the organization`s website. That claimed that we worked with the parents, not against them. As such, it was quite a surprise to discover that most of the kids here are pretty much on their own. Among the three schools, there were about 45 kids, maybe five of whom live with both parents. Many of them are abused, some of them sexually, and our social workers frequently had to visit the childrens` houses to attempt to solve attendance problems. Needless to say, this was seldom successful. My favorite instance of this was with a six year old who attended the school at which I spent most of my time. The social worker went to his house to ask his mother why he hadn`t been attending school. The response? "He doesn`t want to."

The areas in which the schools were located were among the poorest in the city. In both cases, the streets were not paved. In one area, most of the houses had running water. In the other, water was brought around in a truck and poured into garbage cans. So what happened with waste, you may ask. It was dumped onto the street. This is especially bad in a city like Lima where it doesn`t rain. The "houses" in the area where the water is delivered were shantys, complete with tin rooves and walls falling apart. Pig sties are scattered throughout the neighborhood, and sometimes it can be difficult to tell the difference between a sty and a house.

Due to the nature of the neighborhoods in which the schools were located, school lasted only two hours a day. The organization wanted us out of there by noon, as that`s when the drunks (read troublemakers) apparently start getting up. His wife had apparently been kidnapped, after which they became stricter with the hours. This left us with afternoons free. Even so, it was somewhat difficult to explore the city during this time. We`d get back to the house between one and two, have lunch, and then teach classes in the evening. With Lima being as spread out as it is, getting to another part of the city, exploring, and then trying to make it back in time in rush hour traffic was not necessarily a great idea.

In the evenings, teaching was painful. I had a class of about eight students, usually four of whom showed up. I`d ask questions. They`d offer blank stares. I`d ask them if they had questions. They`d offer blank stares. I`d try to explain things in English and in espanol. They`d offer blank stares. Perhaps the most frustrating part of this process was when I asked them to write down three topics that interested them and give them to me so that I could find articles about those topics rather than read about human-dog communication as the book I had been given suggested. In two months, nobody did it.

Now for the part you`ve been waiting for. The tinkerbells and the American chick left the day of the second Christmas party in the schools, about a week and a half ago. That left me and the Limey here to have our own fun. Last night, that fun was supposed to involve attending a football match. Well, we tried. It was the championship between Alianza Lima and a team from Cuzco. We got there about 15 minutes before kickoff and got on the back of a very long line. When they kicked off, we were still standing outside, though at least nearing the gates. Cops on horseback attempted to keep the lines straight. After a while, though, the crowd got unruly. At this point, the cops actually started charging the lines, using their nightsticks on at least a few. My friend and I started to retreat, but waited a little to see if there might still be a chance of getting in. One of the horses started making another run in our direction, at which point we hightailed it onto the next block. We went to ask a cop who wasn`t on a horse whether we might still be able to get in, but she informed us that the door had been closed and that that would not be possible. As we moved away from the situation, a police truck carrying tear gas passed us going the other way. We don`t know if it was ever used, but considering the fact that I had attended a match in Quito, it was just another part of the Latin American experience.