Computer Fury and Frustration!

We left for Curahuasi, Abancay at 7am Sunday morning in John Inca’s truck with Fernando Agüero.  We drove due west and as we dropped out of the mountains of Cusco the temperature warmed up and there were trees with huge green papayas and bananas everywhere. It was a beautiful drive and we were so happy to be warm!  We arrived at the little branch meeting house just after 10am, after waiting on the road for 30 minutes for a minor accident and a toll booth. The members were happy to see us and warmly welcomed us. We have some work to do with the branch; they have no manuals or handbooks, nothing! The Relief Society president asked Julie to take some time with her the next time we visit to tell her how to be a president, she has no idea what she should be doing. The branch is outside of the nearest district in Abancay, and is technically part of the Cusco Mission but it seems as if they’ve been largely forgotten, hence our assignment. We’ll do what we can to help them.  After our meetings we had a lunch of “lomo saltado” (strips of tough beef sautéed with onions and tomatoes, served with French fries and rice.) It was actually pretty good and we didn’t get sick from it. We were a little worried since the restaurant was part of the Curahuasi bus station! The drive home was nice and we even had some rain on the way. The road was paved most of the way and full of curves but the views of the snowcapped Andean Nevados (snowcapped peaks) were breathtaking.  We arrived home at 6pm, tired and ready for bed.

Monday was a FRUSTRATING day! The men from the church who were supposed to show up at 8am “en punto” (on the dot) to fix the electricity never came.  An electrician who works for the Government finally showed up and we now have electricity! The heater works and we don’t have to run our extension cord out into the hall. We have no idea what happened to the church member who was supposed to fix things! But it works, so we’re happy. 

On a side note, the electrician who did come had delayed his coming because the Government had failed to pay him for the work he had done before. He was presented as the engineer responsible for installing it all. So, when he came he got right in, knew where things were, undid all of the plugs, turned on the power and demonstrated that it all worked. Then he told Rich that he needed to stuff the plugs back into the wall until they got back with better outlets. So, rather than turn off the breaker, he delicately covered the life wires with electrical tape and explained how dangerous this all was and that he could blow the whole system if he crossed wires etc…. Julie was sick and Rich was there all alone with the man and just hoping he would not have to provide CPR.

Rich tried all morning to get the computer to read the program on the hard drive we received Saturday morning. We have to download our images onto this hard drive called a “shuttle” so we can mail it to Lima and then to SLC. It didn’t work and Rich was on the phone with our supervisor in Lima, David Tirado, for hours. We wanted to pull our hair out! Well… Julie wanted to pull her hair out!

Tuesday was another day of trying to make the computer program work the way it should. Julie stayed home Monday and Tuesday with a nasty cold. Since we don’t have an internet connection yet in the office, Rich spent the day running back and forth between our apartment where we do have the internet, (if you time it just right) and the office. What a day!

On Wednesday, everything finally worked after uninstalling and installing the program four times, we were able to download our images to the “shuttle” and Rich left to package them up and get them on the bus for Lima. Julie stayed in the office and finished the “monster book” and we made good progress all day. In the end, we learned a lot about our program, perhaps more than we ever wanted to know...

Many years ago, one of our boys complained about an eventful trip to the jungle in which our daughters barfed on both of our sons. He pronounced his irritation and refused to accompany us on any more trips. Rich told him, “If you go on a trip, and no one robs you, you don’t get sick, girls don’t barf on you; what stories do you have?” Life is all about stories.

Rich caught the cold from Julie by Thursday but went to work anyway. He slept in a chair while Julie “slaved away” at the camera! We had a visit from Ms Quispe, the Cusco equivalent of Smith or Jones, who works in the archives office at the university, and she is working on getting us our internet. We didn’t see her again, but she came back Friday morning to tell Rich that there were meetings all day and she couldn’t talk to the IT guy. It will wait until Monday. Rich and Julie were both sick so we took the rest of Friday off, bundled up, drank lots of “hierba luisa” (lemon grass herbal tea) watched some silly American TV shows, napped, and watched the cats that live on the roofs outside. We felt somewhat better in the evening, so we went to Starbucks in the Plaza de Armas to download some books on our Nooks; they have a reliable wireless connection there. We also enjoyed a hot chocolate and then had pollo a la brasa for dinner.


Roof Cats

By Saturday, we both felt much better. Rich ran out early in the morning to take pictures of Cusco before it teams with tourists. He picked the first day when the sun never showed but got some good photos for B&W and put a few on the Flickr page. We got some shopping done and saw charqui (salted and dried alpaca used in cooking), did the laundry and we even went to dinner with the mission president and his wife and a couple of their Peruvian friends. We had a wonderful, relaxed evening and got better acquainted with them.

Charqui hanging in the grocery store



Stuff you just don't see at home...

We were told that there are over 180 festivals in Cusco and pretty much half of the days of the year you can hear fireworks or get snagged in some sort of a procession. A lot of these are in neighborhoods named for a given saint. Julie took a picture of one such parade from our apartment windows.

The Famous Twelve Angle Stone



Neighborhood Festival