Final (Peru) countdown

July 11th, 2008 by Natalie Davis

I have just finished my last Spanish class with the lovely Mabel (a name that sounds SO much prettier pronounced in Spanish!). I honestly don’t know if anything has stuck but am pretty sure I’ll be able to get around Bolivia ok with the basic Spanish that I do have.

The last few days in Cusco have continued to be really interesting. On Wednesday the whole city was closed down with everyone protesting the increasing cost of living and wages that haven’t increased in years. There was no transport anywhere (except for a few rouge taxis that braved having rocks thrown at them for still working) and the community centre was closed so we didn’t go to the project.

I was really impressed with the dedication to the protest, they really did shut down the city for the day. Avendida del Sol, the main street in Cusco went from being a bustling, noisy, traffic ridden road to a pedestrian and protestors road. The protests were peaceful (barring a couple of burnt tyres I saw on the road) and with the chanting I thought had an eerily similar feel to some of the parades I’ve seen over the last few weeks. I couldn’t help but think about if it were at home and unfortunately admit that most people would probably be apathetic to the cause. Even if they agreed with what the protesters stood for I think we’d probably say “go protesters” while carrying on sitting at work working… or something.

I don’t know if they were successful or not. I hope so.

The project has been great the last couple of days too. On Tuesday, along with an Irish volunteer (Chris, who is joining me for one week in Bolivia), we made the most of my $2 shop Bingo Cards and created a frenzy of bingo playing children. Anyone who got bingo came with me into the office and got to pick 2 prizes from a collection of NZ rulers, pencils (thanks to my Dad and Lynda) and random gifts from Chris. The kids absolutely loved it – and it helped me remember my Spanish numbers up to 75!

Yesterday was pretty frenzied and I have been taking a million photos of the kids before I finish. At one point I turned around to see which child was tugging on my shirt and realised that in fact about 6 of them had formed a conga line behind me and wanted to conga around the classroom for ages! As always I was filthy and exhausted at the end of the day but had fun.

There are three volunteers finishing today, one of them is a Spanish guy, Juan, who has been here since November! I can’t imagine how he’s feeling about leaving it all behind after that amount of time!

Chris and Dan (from Calgary and one of the people from Yoni’s house) are coming with me to Bolivia and tonight we take a 9hour bus ride to Puno and make our way across to Bolivia tomorrow afternoon. I’m looking forward to it but not saying goodbye to Yoni and Wendy tonight.

I’d better run right now though and try and find a thank you present for Yoni as well as attempt to stuff everything into my backpack… the 10 seasons of Friends that I got is seeming somewhat ridiculous right now…

xox