survival ---> REALLY LIVING!

 

Survival

Surviving: "live beyond, live longer than," from super "over, beyond" (see super-) + Latin vivere "to live").

Another word for this is “overcome, overcomer” as in “living through trauma”

So what’s so traumatic about 16 years at 11,000 ft (3,000 mts) and a hard 12 hour ride from Peru’s capital city of Lima? Generally it’s one adjustment or accommodation after another until, sooner or later, you hit your max. and you can’t take it! Often in the beginning this was a daily struggle. But that’s too generic. For each person it’s different, of course.

My wife had to adjust to the level of cleanliness wherever we went and learn to just let go. For example, one night we stayed in San Marcos in the Conchucos Valley, Ancash Dept., Chavin Region in North-central Peru. It was late and we weren’t acquainted with the road ahead so we decided to overnight. The bed was a hammock, really, and the stuffing was hard and old. But what triggered her was the smell of kerosene everywhere. We discovered they had literally mopped the floor with it and found out that it was the only thing they found to keep cockroaches, bedbugs, fleas and mice out of the rooms! So you accommodate to the smell and slippery floor: You put up with it to avoid the critters and then move on!

In 1987 we finally had negotiated with the Family Aguirre Jara in the town of Cajay to rent the use of their rammed-earth walled family house next door to their own home. It was two rooms on the main floor with a patio and garden (the other two rooms upstairs had piles of corn or straw or potatoes in them). So these were mud walls and floors with a ceiling of wood branches and straw under the rustic home-fired adobe tiles which were heavy and brittle. The monthly rent was a 50 lb. sack of rice-- that’s it!

We had borrowed a Toyota Hilux (4 cylinder, 4x4) from the SIL group (while securing funding and paperwork for our own similar truck); this was was parked outside along the public foot path for anyone to touch, climb on or peer into. Oh! That’s what the kids’ job was-- The parents would say, “Go down to where the gringos are staying and listen to what they’re saying, then report back.” So we had to accommodate to very little privacy for most of our time in the mountains from 1987 to 2002. And our alarm clock at 5 AM everyday? Hee-HAW! The donkey just up the hill sounding like a rusty ol’ waterpump! And he/she kept going it seemed like forever!

Sickness was always around us and boiling water at 11,000 feet never got hot enough to kill bacteria or protozoa, so we had to hand-pump our drinking water through a Katadyne filter which took about an hour for 2-3 litres. At that time you couldn’t just go buy pure water in a bottle. The nearest water source was from a nearby stream just up the hill. Erpidio, the husband of Alquilina, our landlady, helped us dig a latrine just on the north wall of our house. Eventually we got a gravity system Katadyne that supplied a couple of gallons in a few hours so much better. After 16 years our lives grew more comfortable, due to our sensibilities as well as improved access to technology.

But electricity for the first 10 years? You’re outta luck! A year or two later we brought up portable solar chargers for our various battery-powered devices such as CB radio, tape recorder, flashlights, etc. We used a portable propane stove or cooked using eucalyptus kindling and straw as fire-starter.

Complain much, Randy? Yeah, sorry. This was the emotional and physical struggle we went through, and then some. And, there were many positive things that kept us going. Two things immediately come to mind: the stark beauty of the landscape and the privilege to be married to such a lovely and hearty Tomboy of a girl who could suck it up and keep on going! Was I lucky or what!

It’s one thing to go up there single or even married without children. But to then have children and RETURN there? Are you nuts? Ha! That did cross our minds plenty of times. Both Greg (1988) and Tim (1990) were born through a midwife clinic in Surquillo down on the coast in Lima. Now let me say that the community of Cajay at first reluctantly and cautiously accepted us into their village of 400 families. The men felt I could stay in the village centre during the day while they were all out in the fields. Why not? “He has no children at his age, so he must be gay!” they would say! Then we would return after the births of our children and expanded our rent arrangement to include the whole house for the kids. Everything changed in the minds of the community, so much so that some dared to ask,

“Why would you bring your children here? Why risk it? You must have nice homes back in Canada, right? WHY??”

Slowly they began to actually believe why we were there and… suddenly we became THEIR GRINGOS (I actually heard a few of them boast of this when we were in the nearby provincial capital of Huari). We slowly won their trust. And our boys were safer there than anywhere else they could have lived. Everyone looked after them so that these kids (after learning Spanish and a few phrases in Quchua) had tonnes of “uncles” and “aunties” to talk to. We all helped out in the wheat, corn, and potato planting and harvesting-- what an amazing agricultural cycle they lived in!

Of course there was sickness and infections, lots of rain and landslides and very little government infrastructure nor health workers available. One time Linda awakened at 2am to drive down the hill to a farmhouse to help in a birth only to discover that the mother had been for 2 months carrying the dead fetus in her womb! Another time there was a local bullfight and a drunk and macho farmer tried to take on the bull only afterward to be carried with his friends to our house with a gored stomach blood dripping on the ground in our front patio. Then there was the drunk trying to cut the branches of a eucalyptus tree… 60 ft high, then falling only to BOUNCE when he hit the ground, then proclaim, “Alcohol saved me!” (Whaat??)

The food was yet another accommodation, but for us it became a joy to learn their cooking habits and recipes. Peruvian dishes are world famous and Quechuas have even more unique flavours. And when a Quechua family invites you INTO THEIR KITCHEN to sit by the fire and watch the children and guinea pigs scurrying and squealing, you know you are now PART OF THE FAMILY! I still remember this now with tears in my eyes. Later on our landlords and their family officially became our godchildren with all the camaraderie and responsibility that attends!

Yes, this survival lifestyle started as a one huge learning curve in the same way one enters the actual Conchucos Valley: driving up, up, up the sumit of 14,000 ft. then through a 1 km long tunnel to what we call MIDDLE EARTH.

Looking back on it ALL 4 of us today say: No regrets whatsoever! We still miss the adventure and the relationships.