una historia para ti.

a story for you. about my father´s fiesta saturday night.

it started off a normal fiesta. well really, the whole thing was "normal" chimbote style. but in any case, i sat in my room until i was called downstairs to join the family, about 30 people or so, for dinner. the dinner was quite large consisting of turkey, chicken, puffy rice, green stuff which i still have no idea of it´s consistency, and chi-cha morrada, one of the typical drinks of peru. a toast of champagne was shared among the family. everyone stood up and first, the eldest daughter made a toast. then another family member, and finally my father himself made a toast to himself? he talked anyway, and everyone cheered, and drank another cup of champagne. then came out the wine, beer, and of course, dancing!

the dancing started off with my father dancing with his adorable, very old mother. quite touching and cute. then he danced with his girlfriend. and finally, apparently, the dance floor was open to all because my cousin, who i had never met before, immediatly grabbed my hands and pulled me up off my seat. of course i had no problem with this because i´ve fallen quite in love with peruvian music and will dance anywhere, anytime it is played. anyway, we danced and danced, and my family loved to shout out things such as, "bajo bajo!" which essentially means, "go down" so i would have to dance low to the ground. they were loving the gringa dancing.

in between songs i would sit back down in my chair until someone new would ask me to dance. in the meantime, my uncle taught me the tradition of "passing the cerveza." i don´t really know if this is a tradition or not, but there is an actual technique to it. so, there is one bottle of beer out (quite a large bottle - the size of a wine bottle i would say). the person two seats to the left of me would pour a glass for the person immediatly to the left of me. the person to the left would accept the glass, turn to me and say, "salud". i would have to accept the salud, then the person would drink the glass, pour more into the glass for me, pass me the glass. i would then look to the person to the right of me, say ¨salud.¨they would need to accept, i would then drink, pour them a glass, and on it goes down the line. this may seem like such an easy concept, but it took awhile for me to catch onto. my uncle kept looking at me and saying ¨salud!¨ and i would say salud back. he would then hand me a drink and i would drink it. but i never knew what to do after that until he explained it to me.

anyway, the night went on and on... more dancing, i learned the traditional "wino" dance, well attempted anyway. then around midnight, we all suddently heard gun fire outside. i was sitting down against the wall, taking a little breather from all the dancing. at first, i didn´t really get what was going on. then we heard it again, my family started yammering about in spanish, an uncle turned off the stereo, and about three-quarters of the family ran outside! i stayed right where i was. of course i was curious why guns were firing off, but i wasn´t about to be caught in the middle of it. we heard more guns firing and realized it was happening RIGHT in front of our house on the soccer fields right there. my family started yelling for the kids who were playing near the house to come inside, and they all still stood there, watching the gun spectacle. then, almost as abrubtly as the firing began, it ceased. the family all piled back into the house, someone turned the music back up to full volume, and the dancing began again as if a shooting didn´t just occur right in front of the house.

of course, this wasn´t a satisfying answer for me to what just took place, so i searched for my sister who knows a bit of english and said, "por favor, explain to me what just happened in spanglish!" so, from what i understood, there were some "bad boys" sitting outside in front of the house, probably doing drugs. apparently a house called them into the police. the police came in a car, asked the men to leave. the men didn´t so the please fired off their guns as precautionary shots. then one of the boys whipped a gun out and started firing back at the car. then the boys ran away as the cops fired back. and that was that. the end of the ordeal and everything resumed back to normal. it was never talked about again. it would never be considered material to mention in the newspaper, or on the news. it was just normal.

crazy. please don´t request me to come home now. i swear i´m safe... i just won´t get in the middle of any shootings outside my house.

apart from that, i´ve been having pretty average days here. i´m pretty sure every man in chimbote has some sort of interest in me. i´ve had at least 7 wedding proposals, 34 "i love you´s", and countless requests for dates. it´s come to the point that i just laugh at people right in their face. today we had a "campeonato de la paz", or championshipt for peace. it´s a 3 day soccer tournament with all the different youth centers around victoria, the area i live in chimbote. benjamin is the boss of the youth centers, so this was his idea for a peaceful activity to join all the differen groups together. a bit more of an explanation... at one point, the gangs were so bad in chimbote, especially our area victoria, that the youth would just go out in the streets and kill each other for really no reason other then the fact that they created these gangs and decided they didn´t like each other. the parish saw a need for change, so they created these different youth centers, one in each area or street where the gang resided, hoping to change the gangs attitude, and the drug problems that exist. well, the youth centers have indeed helped the gang problems - no one is out killing each other anymore, at least not very often, but anywhere from 80-90% of the guys in the youth centers still do drugs, so that´s still an issue. in any case, benjamin is in charge of all these centers and created this championship for peace in order to hopefully create a fun, accepting atmosphere for the different groups to be together in.

anyway, today was the first day of the championship, therefore i watched soccer for about 3 hours staright. and in the meantime of watching soccer, i was harrassed by at least one member of each youth center, or "gang." one young man, the goalie of one team, approached me, got about 3 inches from my face, and said, "puedo estar tu enormarado." which essentially means, "i can be your lover." i said, "no puedes." which means, "no you can´t." then he told me how beautiful my eyes were, and how beautiful my skin was, and that he would treat me right. and after i said no, he stole my water bottle and walked off. i was actually pissed about the water - i had payed for it! in any case, he came back and made my boss, benjamin, take a photo of us. benjamin said it costs 5 soles to take photos with the gringa, and the guy said he would bring the money on saturday and then take me out to eat. then almost immediatly after he went away, another guy came and asked me to have dinner at his house tonight. i told him i already have plans, which i do in fact have, and he said, "okay, tomorrow then." i said i would have to check with my family and he should ask me again tomorrow. i´m hoping he´ll forget, but unfortunately i don´t think he will. then about 10 min. after that espisode, another man, a police officer in fact, who told me he is 24, asked me to go get ceviche with him tomorrow for lunch! i acted like i didn´t really understand what he was saying, even though i did, just so i didn´t have to be bothered with explaining that i really didn´t want to.

it´s stressful being a woman in chimbote - i don´t have enough excuses for all these people!

tonight i´m meeting with my group of 14-18 year old women for the first time. i´m pretty excited, but also nervous, because i can´t really talk and i have no idea how many will actually turn up. yesterday i went around with a 16 year old girl. we went house to house asking for people and telling them they could come meet us as 7 tonight. we´re going to play volleyball, and then is a person coming in to talk about self-esteem, because that is something everyone in this part of this city is lacking. i´ve come up with an idea for my final project - i´m hoping to collect stories from this group of girls about their past, who they are today, what they want to become, the many problems they face - essentially "i am a girl in chimbote" type of stories. i hope to have them write them in spanish, and then translate them in english, turning it all into a book with both spanish and english translations. in the process, hopefully i can understand life here a little better, and perhaps i can help them somehow in the process as well. but i´m not couting on that working out - i will just have to wait and see. if anyone has a better idea for me and my final project, i will glady accept it because i´ve been racking my brain for ideas and this is the only thing i have been able to come up with - and this idea isn´t even very complete.

other then that, i don´t know what else to say. of course i could say so many differnt things, but i only have so much time and so much energy. the food here is delicious - even more delicious than my food in lima! which i just didn´t think was possible. i can basically eat any kind of fruit i want at anytime - mangos have become a daily part of my diet. the beach on saturday with my european friends was fantastic, loved every minute of it. today is my sisters birthday and we´re having cuy for dinner. unfortunately i had to see a bowl full of dead cuy. it wasn´t a pretty site, but i still want to eat it. i have great conversations with my family everynight, and the 31 year old sister, kelly, is still my favorite. i have something weird going on with my arms - they itch and burn. it´s been about 2 days. my sister put alcohol on them yesterday which idk what that was supposed to do, but oh well. i´m always really dirty and really sweaty, but i´m getting used to never being clean. my body is really sore but i have no idea why. and yeah... i can´t think of any other random details to share.

but in any case, i´m sure i´ll be back soon to write again. keep me updated on life there, too! much love.