Broken Computers, Broken Vans and Broken Promises

Special Education School dance  troop

Special Education School dance  troop

Special Education School dance  troop

Julie's little buddy in the  crowd

Julie's little buddy in the  crowd

The Mundial car attracts dancers

Dancers loading into their combi

Another  protest outside  of work

Sicuani bus station

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Random llama

With  Cynthia Berna in Espinar

Tarcuyoc priesthood meeting

Father's Day well wishers

Father's Day

Kevin, in suit and mismatched shoes

 

 

We had some trouble getting to Izcuchaca on Sunday. The neighborhood of Santiago, where we catch our ride, was celebrating their anniversary so the streets were closed, blocked or full of people. It was just another adventure in this month of fiestas in Cusco. We finally pushed, shoved and jostled our way through the masses and squeezed into a car bound for Izcuchaca. We had a wonderful Sunday and enjoyed our afternoon at home.

Every day this week the Plaza de Armas has been filled with dancers from different schools around the department of Cusco. Judges determine the dancers’ merits on their precision, costumes, authenticity of the dance, etc. The dances can only be from the Cusco area, nothing from other parts of Peru.  The groups ranged from 20 to 40 dancers and they had to dance in three areas around the plaza where they were judged. Each group had its own band and group of supporters (all the other students that weren’t dancing.)It was an incredible spectacle of color, sound and movement.

We had more computer issues at work, one of the many frustrations this week. We think we finally cleaned up the external hard drives that we use. Fingers crossed that our images will download properly now.

On Friday afternoon we had a mission conference with Elder Dallin H. Oaks one of the twelve apostles in our church. What a treat that was! He is the third apostle who has visited while we have been in Cusco. We were spiritually motivated, fed and inspired. It was a wonderful afternoon and we got to chat with him a bit about our mission.  It’s a good thing we had the afternoon with Elder Oaks because, as with all good plans…..

During one of Rich’s visits to the dentist, Rich asked about getting some toothbrushes and toothpaste so we could pass them out and talk about dental care with the primary children we visit. This question prompted the dentist to volunteer to do a “dental campaign.” So, we have been planning this “dental campaign” for Tarcuyoc for weeks now. This dentist along with a buddy (dentist), a student from Canada and at the last minute the students’ mother who is visiting and is a dental hygienist were all set to go. We had the toothbrushes and toothpaste and the members were excited for us to come and have the dentists check the children’s teeth and teach them about brushing and protecting their teeth.

After our conference with Elder Oaks, we went to the dentist’s office to meet everyone, change our clothes and get on the bus for Tarcuyoc. When we arrived the dentist informed us that neither he nor his friend could go! The dentist/member of the church said his wife decided to go visit family and he couldn’t leave his kids, (although his adult, capable sister lives with them.) Anyway, without the dentists, the student lost motivation and his mother only had tools to clean the teeth of four people. With our help, they decided that with the extreme altitude and the difficulty of the trip, it was probably best that the student and his mom didn’t go. We actually had to change the date to this past Saturday so that this dentist could go.  We ended up taking the 72 toothbrushes and 100 tubes of toothpaste to Tarcuyoc ourselves, and explaining the Whys and Hows of dental hygiene.

Now, despite all of the coordination for this… of course, no one told us that Saturday was the biggest festival of the year in that part of the country, K’anamarca! All of Espinar basically leaves for the mountains to the west of town.

K’anamarka is the site of an amazing, Pre-Inca ruin, about 15 kilometers (10 miles) outside of Espinar and every year they have a spectacular dance festival. While we lived here we attended several times and it was always an adventure. However, just today, it made our trip to Tarcuyoc very difficult because essentially every car, bus, combi, motorcycle etc. was going to K’anamarka, in the complete opposite direction of Tarcuyoc. We finally managed to find a combi that was going our way but we had to wait for over an hour for it to fill with people. Around noon we trundled up to Tarcuyoc and wearily tumbled out of the combi and the wonderful members and the missionaries were waiting for us. Of course everyone was disappointed that the dentists weren’t there, and Julie was far more disappointed than any of the members who had been waiting all morning. We talked about the importance of keeping their teeth clean and brushed and showed them how to brush properly. They were very excited to get toothbrushes and toothpaste, a first for the majority of them.

Despite everything, we enjoyed our Saturday afternoon with the members and had a delicious lunch of trout, potatoes and rice that the Hatun Mama prepared. There were no combi’s going back to Espinar so we paid a member of the group to take us, four missionaries and Brother & Sister Flores in his van. About ten minutes out of Espinar, the engine started making a funny, hissing noise. The temperature gauge shot up and thankfully, he saw it in time to pull over.

He said, “I don’t understand it. I just put coolant in the engine after it ran all day yesterday.”

Rich asked how much he put in and he said that he filled the reservoir, no mas.

We put in a liter and a half of water that Rich had but the engine just boiled that too. We made our way a couple of kilometers to a place where there was a fairly strong flow of water and put more into the reservoir, this time with the engine running so that more moved into the radiator and engine block. No one can imagine how desperate this group was for expertise to have to rely on Rich for mechanical expertise…

We got back in and Rich told our driver to go home and put in coolant until it would take no more!

On Sunday, before leaving town, our friend Puri Pila Paco, invited us to her home to have roast lamb and chuño and hot chocolate, before going to church. We went back out to Tarcuyoc and had similar difficulties finding a ride there. At last a car came along that offered us a ride for an additional 5 soles to the regular price. We had a great ride and discovered that the young wife of the chauffer was a classmate of a close friend from there, Yeny Velazco. A small world indeed.

We had a wonderful meeting block and afterwards, the ladies treated us to a Father’s Day feast that was one of the most meaningful in Rich’s life. We are always so moved by the generosity of these people when they have so little. It came time to return to town and the van that came for us had the quality of a motorized sieve. We rode to Espinar in a cloud of dust.

We had a spectacular sunset ride and no trouble getting to Sicuani. Yet, when we pulled in there, there were very few busses. We could not figure out why at first. Note to self, this is fiesta season… We went into the terminal, teaming with people, and began to cast about for a ride when a helpful chap said he had a van to Cusco and would take us for only two soles more than our usual rate… We got into this packed little van and it filled fast. We took off and about ten minutes from Sicuani slowed to a full stop because of traffic. Bumper to bumper barely describes this. It stopped completely for about two hours.

Somewhere in this two hour lapse, Rich began to notice a sort of tapping in the engine that is never a happy sound in engines and makes one think of the Raven in Mr. Poe’s poem. We discovered that our delay was caused by a total lack of traffic control at the huge carnival at the ruins of Raqchi. Normally, about 20 minutes out of Sicuani, these are usually a wonderful and infrequently visited archeological site. No, the fiesta has nothing to do with the ruins other than that they take advantage of a flat spot  outside of them to put up tents, tilt-a-whirls, and Ferris wheels etc.

By the time we reached there, the knocking was apparent to even the Peruvians’ in the car. Once we passed the snarl of traffic, and the driver began to attempt to accelerate, it became pretty clear that we were not going to get to the next pueblo. We thought of the words to Leon Russel’s, Manhatten Island Serenade, “Sitting on the highway in a broken van…” The driver turned around and we limped back up the road to the passengers’, self-evident, refrain of, “What kind of a lousy, stinking driver are you?!” and “What kind of combi is this?!” We became fearful that he would take us all the way back to Sicuani. We had visions of trying to find lodging there which was never good even when we knew we had to and planned for it.

To our relief and the driver’s, obviously, we got to the traffic snarl-point and he stopped so that we could find a bus to take us back to Cusco. We managed a ride in a city transport bus with hard plastic seats but at least it would get us home, no matter how cold, miserable and bumpy. While we got our gear into that bus, Rich went back to get our fare back from the, lousy, stinking van driver only to find that he had left with our money and become a lousy, stinking thief! Now, now… we decided that in the confusion, and upset, he may have just forgotten he had an extra s/.24…

We made it back to Cusco and got out in a completely unfamiliar neighborhood where the bus line ended. However, there was a big sign that said “inter-provincial busses are prohibited from stopping here.” We had a good laugh about that! In the end, we found a taxi and got home 14 ½ hours after we left our hotel room in Espinar. What a trip!