Bring in America

            Last Tuesday I decided I had had just about enough of this no Internet business so I decided to dip down into the main town for a day. I called up my man Orlando who drives a car back and forth in the morning, to have him pick me up at 6:15am as he only does two trips and the other one is at noon, which for my desperate need of Internet was too late for me. Therefore bright and early the horn blares outside my window, and I stumble groggily down the stairs to the car. We proceed to pick up two large bags of potatoes, one large bag of cilantro, three boxes of cheese, two cartons of beer, and six more people in a five-person car. Satisfactorily full we head down the hill gossiping about who owns the new green car in town that is also now giving rides up and down. As we arrive in town I ask Orlando if he is going to be making any trips in the afternoon, to which he gives me the same response I always get which being no his last return is at 11:00am. However at seeing my desperate look he tells me to give him my cell phone number and if by chance he makes another trip he’ll call me. I then ask him if there is any other way I could get up in the afternoon, thinking of that new fancy green car, but he tells me my only option is a farm truck. I ask him where I could find these trucks and he simply says down there, as if it was obvious. As he drives away I realize that ‘down there’ could me a million different places, but such are the direction giving skills here in Peru.

In town I put on my American façade, took out my pre-written list of things to get done, and started ticking things off, feeling so productive! I drowned myself in the Internet, bought materials for my upcoming English class, ate the delicious apple filled pancake at my favorite café, and most importantly went to the post office. At first the post woman told me that there was nothing there for me, to which I pointed at the large pile of boxes behind her and encouraged her to sift through those, and what do you know she pulls out not one but TWO boxes with my name on them. I sign about thirty different forms for this lady and skip out of there, promising myself that I had to wait until I got back home in order to open them. That afternoon I watched the rain pass from the window of our hostel friends who let me sit in their common area and eat lunch. At the first clearing I jumped up and completed the rest of my errands. I went down to a stationary store, which seemed a bit off of the beaten path, but it turned out the lady that runs it is very familiar with Peace Corps and we had a bonding moment over that. I then got up the nerve to ask her if she knew where the trucks to Levanto leave from, and to my surprise she announced that it was right here from her store. I could not believe my luck. She called up her friend to ask when he was leaving for Levanto that evening. Still with a smile on her face, as if she was still doing me a favor she says that in fact her friend only leaves from her store once a day at 4:00am in the morning. I knew it was too easy to have just stumbled into the storefront, so I tell her thank you very much and I head off to continue my search.

Next I ask the lady that I buy my two mangoes from, and she leads me down the street to two guys who say that a truck with a bunch of potatoes was leaving right now just down the hill. At the bottom of the hill there is no truck but a bustling market I never knew existed. I ask some kids at the market, and they tell me to go up a block, where there is a truck and the guys, surprised to see a gringa in this neck of the town really wanted to help, so they affirm that there is a potato truck leaving just down the road. This direction leaves me to the recycling center where some guys are sorting the recycling. I take the opportunity to ask them about what recycling they buy, and I introduce myself as a peace corps environmental volunteer, and that we will hopefully be in touch! This part of the trip makes my wild goose hunt feel somewhat productive and I start to succumb to the fact that I might have to spend the night in town, delaying my packaging opening by a day. One of the recycling guys wipes some dirt off his face, and inquires me about what I was looking for in the first place, and I explain that I am trying to get back to Levanto on a truck. After he wipes the surprised look of me on a truck off his face, he calls up his friend, who tells him where the stop for trucks that go to Levanto is; of course there is an organized stop that nobody wanted to tell me about. He gives me somewhat more specific directions including a store name, and words like corner and blocks. I give my thanks and head back up the hill to find the truck stop. Finally I arrive to the place I think he’s talking about and sure enough there is a truck being filled with potatoes. I ask the women in front who looks vaguely familiar the destination of this truck, and to my great relief she proclaims Levanto. I ask when they are leaving, and they say right now which I am sure means in about 30 minutes, giving me enough time to run up and grab my packages and other goods from the hostel where I had left them. I tell them to not leave without me and speed walk the ten blocks to the hostel.

My arms exhausted from carrying all my acquired goods in very awkward bags, I arrive back to the truck greet the driver who is standing at the back of the truck, and ask if I can get a ride. He hollers at a kid that is in the back of the truck to come and get my things, and then he gets a carton of beer that I can stand on in order to hoist my self into the truck bed. I clamber over the potatoes to the where a family of two boys and a young mom are standing huddled. There is a large canvas covering over our heads, and suddenly I have a feeling that I am escaping from somewhere, or perhaps an illegal immigrant entering America. We get a move on things and make our way up out of town. As we are leaving the city limits the kids tell me there is no more risk of the police and we can go sit up top. Unaware that that’s what we were waiting for, I climb up to sit on top of the canvas with them, where we have an incredible view as we head up into the mountains. I call my host mom and tell her I’m on my way via one of the trucks, and she laughs at me in surprise. Finally I have figured out how to get back to my site in the afternoon when no cars run, a pretty big achievement for the afternoon.

Upon getting back home I drop my stuff outside my door and excitedly bring my package into the kitchen. This is a bit of a risk to open packages in front of the host family, because I will be expected to share everything that is in them, but I am too excited, and I want to share the excitement with my host mom. I first open the package from my friend I worked with this past spring, and who did the Peace Corps in Cameroon recently, in other words a friend that knows just what a Peace Corps volunteer would want! Inside this surprisingly heavy box was full of soup mixes, mac and cheese, easy to make meals that just need water, granola bars, gum, and American magazines; a fresh breath of home! The soups excite my host mom, and we enjoy reading the packages together, and munching on sour patch kids. I fill the kitchen table with American packaging, and she figures out our whole dinner based around the new goods plus some potatoes that were already boiling away. We get started on the minestrone soup and after the three minutes of needed cooking time she asks me to come test it to see if its ready. She holds out the wooden spoon as if for me to slurp up what’s in it so I bend over ready to fulfill this task, but she slowly lowers it down more and more so that I can quite get to it, and find myself slowly taking a bow leading with my lips outstretched ready to slurp up some soup. I immediately feel like I am eight and my bother is torturing me, him thinking the game is so funny. Finally in explanation my host mom shouts out, ‘no it’s going to burn you!’ I assure her that I’ll be fine, for nothing stays hot here for very long, and I finally slurp up the soup in the spoon meanwhile both of us are laughing uncontrollably at what had just happened. My host dad was skeptical of the American speedy dinner, but no one can refuse my host mom when she tells you to eat up, and thus it was a joyous meal all prepared in under ten minutes!