Peru 2009

This is a story from Pisco that continues to inspire the students. Marcelo (none of us knew his last name) was along with Percy, one of the hardest workers in making the floor for Abuelita Ana. We knew he was not related; he lived across the street. Why was he working so hard on our project, we wondered.

One day at sunset, while I waited with Mr. Daggett for the concrete to dry a bit before he finished polishing it, I sat with Abuelita Ana on a bench by the slab. We watched the sun set slowly over the Pacific Ocean, only a couple hundred feet from her house.

She explained that Marcelo was a child ten years ago. He and a friend of his hung out by the beach every day, child-age beach bums, if you will. One day, they went swimming, but his friend disappeared. Marcelo did not know what to do, so he just sat at the beach waiting. Abuelita Ana noticed him there and talked to him. Marcelo had no family to return to. After a week, the body washed back to the shore. Marcelo continued to stay at the beach, listless. Ana took him in to her house, and he has been with the family ever since.

She noticed that Marcelo sometimes goes into epileptic seizures, but cannot afford the medicatons to prevent this.

Marcelo rarely spoke while we were there. He would just grab a shovel and begin mixing or carrying load after load. When we tried to spell him, as we had to do for ourselves, he would wave us off and keep working. When we said our goodbyes, he broke into sobs and kept hugging us, with an emotion the men in Peru rarely display.

All of us remember Marcelo´s great devotion to the family and to us.

Joe is a decisive person, and he lets us know his decisions right away. Recently, he has declared his approval more often about the Peruvian cuisine, including almost everything the cook at Miguel Pro served and, yesterday afternoon in Cuzco, the mushroom soup and burrito. He scored a goal in our game with the fathers of the host families, and in one magnificent missed kick, did a complete somersault on the concrete without a scratch.


Peter is what they call a true ¨caballero,¨ a gentleman. Although he towers over the Peruvians, he is always gracious, helpful and curious to learn more. In Cusco, he is soaking up the sights.


Adam, for all his athleticism on the job, carrying wheelbarrows of concrete and on the soccer field hustling after the ball with all the zest of a linebacker in football, is quite a scholar. He wrote out his farewell to his family, had it translated, then read it to them at our farewell party on Sat night, changing many of the words into his best Latin pronunciations. Everyone enjoyed his enthusiasm. On the plane yesterday, he was explaining passages from Dante´s Divine Comedy that he found interesting.


Jimmy horsed around with his host-family brothers until the very end, they evidently were acting like true brothers. Here in Cuzco, his American radar located the McDonalds and within seconds was in line. We had to coax him back, but who knows if this morning he has not already chowed down on the Egg McMuffin, though he might have to reread Adam´s cautionary blog about Peruvianized American food.


Ben spoke his farewell in flawless Spanish. He has mastered ingress and egress from multiple modes of transportation: bus, taxi, minivan, airplane, mototaxi. He even made his way up the steep street of slippery ancient cobbles on the way to the San Blas procession.


Blake acted like the big brother to 10 year old Martin, his host-brother. He bought a soccer ball for him, and when Martin broke down as he tried to speak at the farewell ceremony, Blake went over, sat down next to him and consoled him, putting his arm around him.

Roger was one of the ¨stokers¨ for the beastly cement mixer, feeding its hungry craw for each round. Even I could not pull the shovel from his determined hands. Yesterday, he bought a stylish alpaca sweater but noticed a hole in the should seam. He was quite impressed that the saleswoman sewed it up with an alpaca strand in just a minute.

After extended goodbyes with our host families in Tacna, we flew to Cusco. Some of us got headaches from the 10k foot altitude, but after a late lunch all were feeling fine enough to go shopping and touring. After visiting the immense Cathedral filled with gold-leaf reredos and hints of Incan theology hidden in the artisanship, some of us went to where the sound of a band announced a procession in honor of St. Blaise.

Most of us are familiar with the blessing with candles in early February on his feast day, but I did not realize that he was an Armenian bishop who was also a doctor and the patron saint of gynecologists. For that reason the statue here has red gloves. Also why many expectant families come to pray in this church.

I got to the church just when the band entered the square after a procession. The statue, at least 15 feet tall, including mini statues of assisting priests and acolytes, was sitting on a platform in the square outside the church.

Suddenly, around 30 men in San Blas vests emerged from the crowd and took their places at three poles beneath the statue, which must weigh as much as a car. They lifted it on their shoulders as the band struck up as reverent a tune as a brass band with drums could muster. The men began shuffling forward, then turning right and left. When the band struck certain notes, the porters all genuflected and made the sign of the cross. It was an arduous prayer, taking strength and coordination. I thought it was the male counterpart to the efforts of childbirth. The stature swayed and bobbed.

The band struck up a second piece, this one faster, and the carriers shuffled around in circles even faster. I was terrified that they would stumble under the weight. I didn´t know who to be afraid for more, the statue, the men or the crowd, which had to give way repeatedly to the swaying, almost drunken lurches of the men. Then, the doors of the chuch swung open, and the statue started to surge up the 20-foot flight of stairs, just as suddenly, it slipped back down the steps toward the crowd.

That was when the firecrakers went off. To call them firecrackers does not do them justice, for they were more like sonic booms. One series, two series, three, four, five, interspersed with the wild allegrettos of the band, until finally the men squeezed into the portal with the statue, the miter of Bishop Blaise and his shepherd´s crook just barely fitting into the space.

For a moment, the statue was poised at the door, as if to say his goodbyes, to the sound of even more sonic explosions.

When the statue was finally swallowed into the church, I joined the rush to enter. I made it in just before the band leader held more of the crowd back, so that the musicans could enter. Their brazen horns, which filled the plaza outside, were nearly deafening inside.

The whole event was a form of excessive, passionate prayer. One could not help but be swept up with the power of childbirth, which San Blas´ intercession is meant to protect.

I stayed in the ensuing silence for a few minutes with the men in vests and the faithful who pressed close to the statue, once more near its place at one side of the nave. I prayed fervently for my daughter-in-law Anya, about the give birth in August to our first grandchild.

After working for a week, we took a break on Thurs June 18th for a retreat. We called it a ¨pilgrimage retreat,¨ because in addition to prayer and discussion, we visited three places where people of faith are making a difference.

Our three themes reflected the ¨hermenuetic circle¨ of doing justice that frees us from poverty: See, Act and Evaluate. For seeing, we meditated on blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10), listening to Jesus ask us ¨What do you want me to do for you,¨ and considering that we could ask, with Bartimaeus, ¨Master, I want to see,¨ to really see the situation of the poor today.

The second mediation, stressing Action, was on the Rich Young Man, also from Mark 10, where Jesus, ¨looking with love¨ on a young man eager to prove his virtue, challenges him to sell his possessions and follow him. We too, are challenged to not just to sacrifice 3 weeks, but to make it our life´s habit to include the poor in our actions and our careers.

Then, we hopped on public buses (c. $.15 a person) to visit a poor high school, Santa Cruz, run by the same priests who sponsor Univ. of Notre Dame in the US.  It is in a huge ¨invasion¨ area, where people displaced from the mountains and jungle are flooding to the coasts. They build little houses of estera, or woven cane.

The school, only 5 years old, has grown with the neighborhood; there are still some classrooms of estera, yet they are building some with block. The enthusiasm of the children was overwhelming.

Next stop was a Brophy-type school, Cristo Rey, which Fr. Green, S.J., started in the 1960s. It is the best school in the city, to all accounts, with a classroom of internet computers where students are designing web pages, an inside Gym (a rarity in Peru) and a GRASS soccer field.

There is also a cow with its calf, guinea pigs (which if you haven´t heard about cuy, are NOT raised as pets) and acres of olive groves. It warmed my composter´s heart to know that the middle and upper class students are required to spend some time milking and harvesting.

After lunch downtown, we gathered by the Eiffel fountain under a Bougainvillea cupola and meditated on the Beatitudes, stressing the happiness of those who dedicate themselves to voluntary poverty. Mr. Daggett looked like a street preacher, waving his Bible around as he spoke. We then discussed an article ¨The Cost of Short-Term Trips.¨ Which gave us guidelines on how to avoid paternalistic mistakes many make when they come to poor countries.

We finished our day by visiting a center for street children, which was started by a Jeff Thielman, a Jesuit volunteer in the ´80s. Originally it was meant primarily for shoe-shine children and others who had no schooling, but it has evolved into an after school program and adult education center. Doctors who graduated from Cristo Rey started a pro-bono clinic there. There is also a sewing workshop, where poor women can learn a trade.

We had all read Jeff´s book about how he started the center, so it was a fitting end to our retreat to see how his sacrifice and that of the Jesuits and their staff is a living example of the happiness of the poor. When we arrived, the children were assembled for a talent show. Smiles and enthusiasm all around our knees!

After lunch I stopped by the job site to see the progress.  There was great milling around as everyone reapplied sun block, donned work their gloves and looked with pride at what they had accomplished in the morning.  They had set three of the caged columns and filled the front trench with concrete:

 

 

The trenches are each about 30 inches deep and an extra 8-10 inches deeper at the point of each column:

 

 

They are wide enough that kids took naps in them at times -sorry I couldn´t get a picture of that!  But, it is now after lunch and some are having more difficulty getting motivated back to work than others:

 

 

Suddenly, it was as though someone turned on a switch!  Everyone was up and moving and it brought memories of Christmas movies to mind--you know the ones where all the elves are feverishly working on assembly lines to complete all the toys.

 

The cement mixer operator started the mixer, added water and cement.  The mixer was flipped and two guys started shoveling sand and rock into it:

 

 

Then three guys lined up with their wheel barrows, the mixer was flipped again to fill each wheel barrow in turn:

 

 

Each full wheel barrow was pushed over to the designated spot, tipped and the concrete poured into the trench:

 

 

 

As the cement is poured into the trench, two guys make sure the column cage has been stabilized, kept level and plumb, as they push and guide the concrete to fill the area:

 

 

As the trenches are filled, another guy drops big rocks into the concrete to give greater strength and to assume a lot of the volume: 

 

This assembly continues again and again.  There is no talking.  Everyone´s energy is concentrated to the work.  Again and again and again.  Team Brophy in Peru!

I have tagged along on this Peru trip with my husband, Mr. Daggett, for the purpose of seeing Peru.  But I´ve had the pleasure of hanging out here in Peru with some amazing kids!  Here are just a few of my impressions.

 

I spent most of our time in Pisco being sick, but I did attend the baptism and the party following.  What a hoot to watch how the cultures blended as the family welcome us all into their home where they had moved all the furniture against the wall and turned up the music for dancing!  The students clustered, encouraging one another to be the first to ask a young lady to dance--Adam did it!  Soon everyone was dancing.  Jimmy and Joe were entertaining the little boys with jokes, wrestling and nonsense.  Roger even was able to charm Adrianna (the 2 yr old who was baptized) to dance with him--and she did not warm up to any of the rest of us!

 

When Ben had his soccer accident, it was interesting to see all the students surround him, offering their amateur medical advice, lift him into the taxi and be very solitious.  Then they all made sure he was included in everything: bringing him home food when he couldn´t go to dinner with us, helped him get around before he got the crutches, carried his luggage, helped him on and off the buses.  They were all the best EMT´s!  And, Ben, never one to take advantage, did not complain at all.  But once he got those crutches, he has become VERY independent.

 

Here in Tacna, I have had the chance to work with the students on the work site--I did not think there would be any work that I could do or that Ben could do,

 

 

but someone found some!  The land here is sandy and rocky and there are lots of earthquakes so the people have developed a building process that is significantly different from the US.  Initially, very deep footings are dug.  But because the land is so sandy, it is necessary to wet the ground to prevent cave-ins along the trenches.  Here are the students on the first day of digging:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the time the site is ready for pouring footings these trenches will be almost 3 ft deep.  It took the students 3 days to complete the digging.  Peter was the most steadfast in the trenches, choosing not to rotate to other jobs. 

 

The corners are structurally reinforced by the creation of a concrete pillar that requires a rebar cage.  This is built in several steps.  First the rebar, that comes coiled, is cut into short lengths:

 

Then it is pounded out straight to remove the curve from the coil:

Then it is bent into a rectangle: (Jim started this job but Blake took over and made literally 190 of them!)

 

 

Someone cuts small wire into hundreds and hundreds of 10¨ lengths: (guess who got this job!)

Finally, the rectangles are tied to larger rebar with the small wires to create the cage for each pillar.  The house we are working on requires nine pillars so the students work on these and the digging at the same time, rotating jobs to keep all the muscles warm:

But the most important part of all of this is that while the students work, their amazing minds keep going!  There are philosophical discussions of the value of any human life, theological discussions of limbo and hell, deep analyses of different teaching styles of the Brophy teachers, as well as the ever popular, who makes the best hamburger, who is the best soccer player, what is the best car, stereo, band, movie, video game, etc. etc.  Teenagers are remarkable how they can keep all these various topics active in their brains while their bodies continue to move to accomplish someting totally unrelated!  AND, they still have the energy to play sports after a full day of hard labor:

 

What an amazing experience this is!  I wish everyone could have as much fun as I am having!

 

I thought it would be nice to take a break from the more serious, intelligent tone of the blog to give an insight into some of the smaller things that have happened on the trip.  I´d like to share with you the experience that has changed all of us, in one way or another.
      Hungry and homesick? What´s a better cure than pizza right?  The gas station about a mile away from the hostel in Pisco had, what appeared to be, amazing, American style pizza in the pictures above the oven.  Jimmy, myself, and Mr. Jarczyk were sent to retrieve said pizzas, so we ordered 5 nice, big, presumably tasty, pizzas and awaited their grand appearance from the oven in the gas station.
      Normal gas stations have some cigarettes, candy, some sugary drinks, and the nice ones might even have some liquor.  This was no normal gas station.  This was Peru.  It had a whole room stock full of nostalgia-enducing candies that were sure to make the palette of any American salivate in hopeful anticipation of the gratification of an Oreo cookie or a skittle.  This area would certainly be claimed in the name of Brophy in the days to come.
      Along with the amazing, yet seemingly out of place, candy, there were soft drinks, some Redbull, and other Peruvian sodas like Inka Cola (a trip favorite) and Peru Cola.  There was also a whole wall which I´m sure has only appeared to people in dreams.  Bottle after bottle of assorted liquors, wines, and beers, including a very large amount of Pisco, straight from Pisco.
      The absurdity of this gas station finally culminated in the pizzeria, which now holds the life line between Peru and the US for several Americans craving American food in it´s very ovens.  This is not to say that Peruvian food is bad, but there is a limit for chaufa and saltado, this said limit had been reached for some.
      The conversation between myself, Jimmy, and Mr. Jarczyk while we awaited our doughy prizes spanned topics from photography to what Brophy was like a decade ago.  This talk was just a side note for what we were all really thinking; it was just a matter of time until 5 pizzas, 5 pizzas which would fill the tanks of some very weary and sore volunteers, and would spring from the ovens only meters away.  These pizzas were the Ellis Island of our hopes and dreams, a gateway back home, even if just for one meal.
      I have never seen a more beautiful woman in my life.  She emerged from the haze of the wood burning ovens in the kitchen holding the Holy Grail to our Crusade in deceivingly plain, white boxes.  There was no disguise cunning enough to tempt us through the trail of us Templars.
      With the pizzas in hand, we hailed a moto taxi and within minutes were on our way to the hostel to deliver the captured prize.  That´s when disaster struck.  The sound was unmistakable; it was the death rattles of a moto taxi, our golden chariot across the skys, gave a very unwelcome ado just meters away from the gas station.  The frantic pulls from the driver to restart his moto were all but futile.  He quickly clambered out of the vehicle as he saw his passengers were growing impatient.  We watched his head bob around near the engine compartment from the rear window of the taxi as he struggled to breathe a new life into his once great stallion.
      At that moment, another miracle occurred.  After obtaining our cheesy, American goodness, I could not imagine that the night could get better, lest I jinx my luck.  But alas! The moto roared to life after the driving once again began to chug away on the pull start; roaring is of course relative to a 150cc scooter engine.  Once again our precious cargo was on it´s way to its final destination, the stomachs of our patiently awaiting comrades.
      We arrived at the hostel in a matter of moments and we quickly exited the moto, taking precaution to ensure the safety of the pies and pay the driver for his valiant efforts.  The 5 solitary white boxes were rushed to the second floor where a circle had gathered; a scene reminiscent of The Lord of the Flies ensued.  The boxes were torn apart, knives delicately, but deliberately, divided the slices, and the portal to our distant home opened.
      We each had a slice at the ready, ready to be chewed, ready to be enjoyed, ready to be digested.  We bit in.  It was delicio- wait, what is this?!  Aghast, we had been fooled!  This was not pizza, but a foul, sweetly flavored imposter!  It had suckered us in and made us to believe it was truly pizza.  We had been duped!  There was not even a faint hint of the marinara or rich mozzarella for which we craved.  All this buildup, only to be had by an inadequate, unsavory con to our taste buds.
      The portal had vanished as quickly as it had appeared, the gates closed, the Grail once again lost to the sands of time.  This hack left us crazing American pizza all the more.  We went to bed that night with a lesson learned, a lesson about pizza in a Peruvian gas station.  Hopefully upon completion of this tale you too will realize our fated mistake.

They take their baptisms quite seriously in Pisco. At times it seemed liked a small wedding, but it was definitely one of those experiences that plunged you  right into Peruvian culture. The church of the baptism, San Francisco de la Playa, was very symbolic of the surrounding community: simple, poor, and full of people. It was a short ceremony, only about 30 minutes, and three babies from the family with whom we worked were baptised.
Directly after the service ended, pictures with the "gringos" commenced, as many, many were taken. We took some cabs to a rather large house (by Pisco standards), toasted the baptism of the baby, ate chicken and chaufa (fried rice), drank easily over a metric ton of inka kola and started to dance. Though it was (extremely) awkward at first, soon everyone was up and dancing -- including Mr. Jarczyk at one point in time. It was amazing to experience a pure and unadulterated aspect of Peruvian culture, because so many times when traveling we get caught in the tourist part of a country, which really isn´t the country at all. There are some pictures and a sypnopsis of the baptism and party below, but I wanted to share my take on the party. ¡Hasta luego!