COUNTRY: Peru
PROGRAM: UniBreak
PROJECT: Teaching and Construction
WRITTEN BY: Kymon Mansfield
This is the end, beautiful friend.
Those six words pierced my conscious mind like bullets on Sunday, as I stared across to a mountain opposite Machu Picchu, almost blankly.
It's still hard to believe how fast this month has passed. It's impossible not to use clichés when talking about the passage of time, but it does, genuinely, only feel like yesterday that I arrived at Lima. That was 26 days ago.
It's hard not to get sentimental about vacations. Even to consider the obvious - that I'm on the other side of the planet, fifteen thousand kilometres away from anything that I could call family or home - is hard to really comprehend, and yet somehow I feel just as welcome here, if not more, than in Sydney.
Monday and Tuesday proceeded as usual, however without the other three UniBreak girls, who were still in Bolivia enjoying the cheap souvenirs.
On Tuesday, we were celebrating the 37th wedding anniversary of the parents at a restaurant in the main square. One of the brothers of my family told me I was like a brother to him, followed by the cliche yet touching 'mi casa su casa' sentiment. Somehow hearing the words "you are like a brother to me" just sounds so genuine, in such an indescribable way.
Then Wednesday came, and I silently had my heart broken as the four of us had our first home visit. We, including Nico, followed one of the kids from our school to her home, where we met her mother and one of her four siblings. As soon as we got to her house my heart sank, not in pity but in empathy. It was hard to relate to; I had never in my life been exposed to such extreme poverty, either first hand or through direct observation.
The mother had such a complicated life. Her husband was often away from the house trying to find odd jobs, often involving construction, because he didn't have the education to find or hold down a 'regular' job. He was the sole provider for a family of seven - five kids, his wife and himself. They owned guinea pigs which they raised and then either sold to make ends meet, or ate as a delicacy (a tradition in Peru). What was even worse was that even though we had good intentions in helping this family, I couldn't help but feel as though we were effectively just throwing a pebble into a lake. We may have made a slight difference, but people all throughout this community live exactly like this family does. I know that I should concentrate on the proverb 'think globally, act locally' (a phrase usually intended as a think-green initiative, but equally applicable here), but it's just so hard for me not to feel completely useless, to totally absorb what I sensed as a resonating helplessness from a class of people who have basically been forgotten by their own government.
Strangely enough, as I returned to the school to collect my things to go home for lunch, I started to smile. In a project like this, it's easy to be overwhelmed by newness and forget why you're here - many people brush it off as a holiday with a little manual labour, or categorise what they're doing. But that doesn't hide what I, in that moment, remembered as my initial intention for coming here, and what the intimate work at the school was achieving: helping these people.
Thursday came and school was cancelled, giving us the perfect opportunity to begin our long, long task of re-painting the school. We stayed considerably longer today than we were used to. Despite illnesses and several of us feeling either slightly under the weather or just really fatigued, we pushed on and almost finished the job in the four and a half hours we had. The school was so quiet without the kids, too. By now we've grown accustomed to working while classes are on, meaning a relative level of silence, but this felt different; in a sense, almost eerie. Returning to my surrogate home considerably later than usual, I couldn't get my mind off the weekend, of this family that has taken me in as one of their own, of leaving not only them, but here. Peru. I know everything has to end eventually, but some endings are easier to prepare for than others. That only leads to one question: will I ever really be prepared to leave here?
And then it was Friday. Instead of work, the three GapBreak guys and I played frisbee. School was off again, as the kids were participating in one of the Peruvian Independence Day parades. Missing Rachel and Jasmine, the eight of us- accompanied by Nico- headed down to the main square to watch the marches. It was strangely fitting that the end of their march marked the end of our work with Pumamarca. The four of us stood in the middle of a circle the teachers of the school had organised the kids into. They cheered for us, thanked us, sang for us, presented us with postcards of thanks, and then, finally, hugged us, one by one. Just like how we started.
We then headed back to the school to get what we were gifting to one of the families of the community. It was a lot more than I was expecting us to give, and it struck me in such a way that I could barely breathe as I saw the kids carrying chairs, tables, a mattress and food to the taxi, to be taken to someone that really seemed to deserve it.
And that is unfortunately where my stream of consciousness ends; my story ends here. My time in Peru is over, my crystal ship is leaving. My mind is racing but I only have one last question. There are only two people in my world: you and me. You are my surrogate family, everyone I worked with, everyone I met, everyone I didn't meet, and everyone I am yet to meet. You are Peru, and you made my trip here, my job here, my time here- mean something. Is this our last goodbye?
'And gazing out the window, as I descend into the sky
But I'm the one who's left behind.'
-Kevin Parker
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