The AIDS Village
During the International AIDS Conference (which was held in Toronto), World Vision presented
"A 3,000-square foot interactive audio tour through an African village. Each visitor will experience what life is like in the life of one of four children affected by HIV and AIDS."
My parents and I attended, while in town to see Spamalot (a strange combination, I grant you). It was right downtown, in the heart (bowels?) of the business district, and a shiney looking blond man stood out in front inviting people in. He too seemed a strange juxtaposition to the heartrending World Vision commerical playing over and over on a large television across from where we, and 12 others of varrying ancestry, waited to be given our headset, and start our tour.
"I only have one life."
We are each handed a MP3 player (how high tech we are) labled with the name of one child. I am given Timothy, and walk through to the first room. I should be thinking about my little boy, who is from Uganda, but instead I am thinking how well organized this is, as only one person is in each area at the same time.
On the walls are pictures of Timothy, who is 5, his village, friends, and family. There is one picture of him playing soccer outside a school. For the first time in months I remember the school house in the middle of nowhere, lost at the bottom of a hill on the Enkosini property in South Africa. I remember sitting in the trunk of the truck holding a pot of stew and trying to keep it from spilling, as we rode down to see the children.
Though both times I went a group of eager young artists painted my face, layer upon layer, colour upon colour, til I looked like dishwater and felt a rainbow, most of the group went off to the far end of the field, avoiding the chickens and pigs as they went, to play "football". Some of the kids were fantastic, and one boy seemed to have an unequal status of respect amongst them for being the best player. I wonder if Timothy plays in a field like this, dodging livestock and dreaming of glory.
By the time I have made it out of that room, Timothy's father has died, due to the presence of "The Traveler", a disease that makes him tired. In the next he loses several sisters, aunts, uncles and, finally his mother. I have stopped feeling sorry for him/me; your mind can only process so much sadness at one time. Of course, I first realized that in Africa, in the orphanage. It was not the place, or the staff, or the children themselves; for the most part they were cheerful and thankfully oblivious to the perils of the future. It was the first time I realized that even though only a few of our kids had AIDS now, the national statistics (1 in 3, I believe) will eventually sentence so many more. "What is the point?", you think, and then you stop thinking, because there is no answer.
Timothy is 10 now, and living with an aunt and an orphaned cousin. The next room I enter is larger, and filled with people following all four children. We're in an AIDS clinic now, sitting on hard wooden benches, waiting for our results. We wait a minute, in silence. The voice on the tape tells us to go to the front, and a woman behind a glass window hands me a piece of paper. I can't look at it until I am out of the room, away from the others who will not be paying attention anyway, but focused on their own future. On the paper is a red plus sign. Timothy has AIDS.
There is very little else to say. When World Vision finished gathering information for the display Timothy was still living with the aunt, dreaming of his future. I wonder if he realizes how short that will be?
All in all I think the display was excellent, interesting and well done. So why did it make me so angry? It made me angry, because as we stepped back out into the blinding sunshine and traffic of downtown Toronto that day, I felt nothing for the little boy I had just shared half an hour with. I was completely numb to his suffering.
What I was thinking about was the children I myself had seen while in South Africa, some of whom really did have HIV. I thought about those children and how hopeless I felt being there, being useless, and still caring. I thought about days in the baby house when I would be laughing, playing with a child and then go into the bathroom and cry because I wanted so badly to help and didn't know how. Those faces, those spirits are with me even here, a little like ghosts, though still alive. You push them out of your mind because it is such a weight to carry, it is hard to feel guilty all the time. But they don't go away. And it's not that I want them to, but I am longing to turn to the next person in line and say "This is real, these people, this suffering is real, however far away it seems." I know. I've seen it.
N.
posted by Nel @ 7:33 AM
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The area I am staying is called Barranco, which is said to be the "bohemian district" though I think the person who dubbed it this misunderstood the term bohemian. Having walked all over this area, the wealthier neighbouring Miraflores, and being lost for some time in central Lima (you don´t want to know), it seems to me great care was taken in designing each neighbourhood. There are gardens everywhere, statues and brightly coloured (mostly purple and red) flowering plants creeping down from trees and up stone walls. The houses are in many colours, shapes, and carved with great detail and delicacy. Unfortunately, once built there was not the money to maintain them properly, and they have begun to crumble dramatically, being slowly devoured by ancient-looking plants. The rich areas, by contrast, are all neat and pristine and almost spooky in their whiteness. 
The group that had travelled with my from Buenos Aires to Cusco celebrated their last day with a contest to see who could locate the most hideous Peruvian souvenir for under 5 soles, and then exchanged them over dinner. I brought a pen, decorated with (what could only be described as) an alien bug, complete with antenna, with Cusco written across the bottom. I did not win. One of the Barbies gave me a pen key chain, for my "writing hobby", so I could "not miss a moment". I was almost touched.
The next morning the others left for Lima, to catch various flights to various locations over the next few days. I moved my stuff downtown to a hostel called The Point, which was noisy, overcrowded, and generally cheerful. On the first night (where i turned out to be the only girl in a "mixed" dorm) a very chatty Australian named Johnny asked to borrow my journal to do lines of cocaine off of-- this was by far the most surprising moment of the whole trip. The next morning I sat at the bar (breakfast is in the bar) and ate fruit salad with a Canadian photographer, travelling with two of his friends, more or less under the assumption of making a travel documentary. S. was excellent company, and we spent the rest of the day wandering around the city going to art galleries.
We were to be picked up at The Point at 7 the next morning, but there was some unexplained trouble with the bus, and our guide, who's name turned out to be Ceasar, though for the whole length of the trip we thought it might be Cecil, said we would have to wait a while. "Waiting a while" is something one becomes very accustomed to, when travelling. Finally Ceasar says we are to take a cab to our bus (I know better than to ask questions), but by then E. had wandered off to buy tamales for breakfast (E. is skinny as a reed and never stops eating), and by the time he gets back D. is so angry S. and I must sit between them in the cab to prevent violence.
Lunch is in a local restaurant in a small town, and three of the four of us do not eat, as S., D. and I are all vegetarians, and D. has convinced us the soup is made with chicken stock. He is probably right. We take a short tour of the town to kill time (because Rosio, our cook, has vanished) and watch as school lets out and hoards of children come running (popsicles in hand) and go wading in the fountain.
Ceasar keeps turning around in his seat, fiddling with a large necklace he tells me he has made himself, saying "It is about four more hours more, then three more hours more", but I have completely lost track of time. The roads are so dusty we are all choking (and D. and I clutching our inhalers) in the van. S. tries to convince Ceasar to stop the air conditioning from drawing in air from outside, but Ceasar does not believe him.
We reach the Cloud Forest, which is exactly that, a forest in the clouds, and without doubt one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The fog is so thick we can barely see out our windows, and we blow out our first tire, splashing through one of the many streams that run across the road (more accurately where the road runs across the many streams). We drive up, we drive down, we drive up, we get out and walk along a road where the vegetation is so brilliantly green it hurts to look at it. We see a monkey, sitting in the top of a tree, looking down at us curiously. We see several of Peru's national bird, a ruby red creature called the cock-of-the-rock. We blow out another tire.
It is fully dark by the time we stop for the night, in a town framed on all sides by the jungle. I walk up and down the "street" three times, and it take 15 minutes. The showers are cold, but even at night the air is too warm for anything else. I drink tea and sit thinking how strange it is we have all ended up here; I look across at the others, who are thinking the same thing.
The next morning we start early, and leave more or less on time (though E. has gone to the market to buy something). The trees along the road thicken, and it gets very hot, inside and out, without our noticing. I am aware of nothing else until around lunch time, when we stop suddenly on the banks of a river, and Ceasar tells us the road has been flooded. He vanishes (rather conveniently), supposedly to make a phone call, and the guys and I go wading through the water which is very cold and surprisingly fast, watching as three large trucks try to extract another vehicle from the mud. Still, Rufio decides to make a try for it, and it takes all of us (and the cook) to push the van back up the stony beach. 
Eventually we hire another boat to take us the three hours down the river to where our boat is waiting. We were all quite giddy as the motor belched into life, the boat bobbed and the breeze cleared a little of the dust from our eyes. D. couldn't bear to turn his camera off until the battery died, E. fell asleep (how?) on the floor and S. took about 300 pictures of snowy egrets. I was doing my best to embody the expression ¨Drinking it in¨, not quite believing I was with three near strangers on a boat in the Amazon Basin, and couldn't be happier.
The next two nights were spent at a lodge built on a small clearing at the top of a hill. The cabins were built on long wooden platforms between the trees, and the walls were made of netting so we could see out as long as there was light, and in the dark the candles would project giant waving shapes over our heads. The other tenant at the lodge was a large, tick-ridden tapier named Pauncho, who kept turning up outside our door, hoping for a treat.
One of the most striking things about the jungle is how loud it is. You always expect when leaving the bustling city, leaving the cars and music (and rowdy drunk people singing Bob Marley, or Don´t Look Back In Anger, apparently the official song of The Point) that your environment will be still and peaceful, but this could not be farther from the truth. The rain forest is bursting with life, birds and bugs and bigger things, things you can´t see but feel sure can see you, all of which have their own sound and smell and energy. The air is thick and heavy, and for a long time I lie back under my mosquito net and try to isolate the whirs, whistles, and whines of this intricate soundscape- but I lose count.
We arrive at the campsite around 4:30, and almost immediately (after being fitted with large rubber boots) set out into the bush, which is no more than six steps from our door. We are walking to the clay lick, where all the parrots go after dark, but every few minutes we stop and Ceasar points out some other plant or creature that we are not to touch. There are lots of tarantulas, scorpions, and ¨"bullet ants"- who´s bite hurts for two days or more. Now I am not afraid of bugs, or snakes, or the dark, which quickly settles all around us, but bullet ants (around the size of your pinky) are far from friendly looking, and Caesar takes such care in describing to us the pain of their bite I am eager to move on.
It is too dark to see anything now, and each time we cross one of the rotting planks that serve as a bridge between --what and what? we can´t see-- I am thinking of nothing but not looking scared in front of the guys. A few seconds later there is a shriek behind me, and D. (who has been startled by a moth) confesses he hates bugs and snakes and the dark (S. and I wonder what he thought he would find in the jungle), and we all turn back to prevent him plunging blindly into the forest by himself. He is obviously terribly embarrassed, and I want to tell him it´s alright -I´m afraid of revolving doors- but I sense this is the wrong moment. 
The next day we (E., S. and I, D. thinks better of it) go hiking again, following Ceasar and the slice of his machete through the breathtaking trees, which are only slightly less oppressive in the light. At night we have a bonfire on the beach, and go searching for Cayman (similar to crocodiles). Ceasar finds a young one and pulls it out of the water (gently, at the plea of the three vegetarians) and we all run our hands over it´s skin and then let it go again. 
The next day we spend 16 hours in transit, by boat and by bus. We blow out two more tires, and find ourselves back in Cusco after dark. The boys stayed one more day in the city, and then left for Puno as previously planned. I was supposed to go and meet them in Arequipa, but predictably enough their "plans" changed, and I lost track of them. I realize this may not sound like much in the re-telling, but these few days were some of the most magical of my life (so far!), and there is not a thing about them that I would change. If I could just be sure I did not dream the whole thing... but that´s what pictures are for.
Now, back to the present... I am leaving Lima tomorrow at midnight, arriving back in Canada early afternoon on the 9th. Speaking of dreaming! Not really sure how I feel about being back, but I know I will need some time to convince myself that I am a student again. I guess this will be my last update for the time being (expect more next summer), but I will continue to write and post pictures to the blog, so be sure and check in, from time to time. Thank you all for travelling with me.
*
All day I worry I am too slow, I am falling behind, etc. T. is 5'11 and walks with a look of utter determination on her face, but Noyme is no more than 4'10 and I am running just to keep up with her. Amazingly we arrive at our first campsite over an hour early, and Noyme says we are "Incredible hikers." T. and I look at each other and raise our eyebrows.
Though still by no means in favour of those who go travelling and spend time only with people from their own countries (herds of such tourists can be found at any hostel anywhere), but there is something about hiking up a mountain, between two endless fenceless fields of Alpaca, in a t-shirt, in the midst of a snowfall, talking about summer fruit in Ontario.
We have dinner in our snazzy little dining tent, with the wind shrieking up and down the walls and making the candles flicker- just to be sure we remember where we are. Noyme and Paul, the guide-in-training, get very drunk on chicha (corn beer), and talk a lot about plants, particularly one Paul (repeatedly) describes as "Peruvian Viagra". 
I take out the itinerary (remember "see a beautiful lake, see two beautiful lakes...") and observe that day two sounds exactly like day one, only higher. This leads to some debate about whether tomorrow's hike will be more or less difficult than the one we had just done. Noyme says¨"longer, but easier" and I do not believe her. 
Somehow, wading unsteadily through the darkness our flashlights seem powerless to penetrate, we find our way to the tent, and put all our remaining clothes on, on top of what we are already wearing. The zipper on my rental sleeping bag is stuck, and I spend most of the night holding it closed with two gloved fingers. T. is tossing and turning and there is no sound anywhere except the wind. I have to go the "bathroom", which I have been putting off because it is just too cold for squatting behind a rock; this is not as much fun as it sounds, and I can't imagine it sounds like much fun.
About 5 AM T. wakes up and tries to get out of the tent, but we have been wrapped up tighter than a Christmas present, and are obviously not going anywhere until someone outside decides to let us out. Luckily this is only a few minutes away, when Noyme "knocks" on the tent and tells us there is "Aguas Calientes" (hot water) outside, for us to get washed with. Unfortunately they put the two orange bowls at least two meters from the tent, and we were so numb from the cold all we could do was sit and stare at them until being summoned to the dining tent for breakfast. We try to repack (strange how much you spread out in one night), but neither of us can get our sleeping bags back into their cases, and it is still too cold to take off most of our layers. 
The scenery was much yellower than the day before, less craggy rocks and more boulders. It was obvious the steep path we were following was nothing but the footsteps of the alpaca farmers, who we occasionally saw sitting serenely in the middle of nowhere, doing nothing at all. Sometimes they had children with them, or older women knitting and looking right through us. I wondered (and still wonder) what it would be like to live in such a place, and what they think about. 
It was a strange walk, being so committed to following Noyme, to not falling behind, to finding my footing that everything else could be forgotten. So much of the time we were walking I was desperate to stop, desperate to sit down, but the minute we do I am wandering off, climbing things and eager to set out again.
Three children appear from a farmhouse up ahead, running beside us and giggling. The oldest one has a baby tied to her back, all three have runny noses, and the thick red cheeks characteristic of the region. I wade across a stream to take pictures of the valley, and when I come back the youngest girl is asking T. for a tip for having her picture taken. We had been given strange green oranges as a snack, and the children seemed much happier to have them than we were. 
We climb to the top of one peak, my head beginning to spin from the altitude. Once again we have that glorious "You thought I couldn't do it but I did" feeling, followed by an angry wind and the maddening dilemma of how to capture a scene like this on camera- it is, after all, everywhere, all around you, vast and empty. At least this is how it feels.
By far the most striking thing about this trek is that we never saw another tourist the entire time, unlike the 150 or so a day joining the Inca Trail. We are in our own private world. Just us and the llamas. Down below there is a village with power lines up around it. "Maybe this year," Noyme says, "the rich people here will get power."
We scramble off the path, as the horses pass by, running shakily along the narrow path, the bags clattering along with their footfall. The cook and porter run after them, absent-mindedly; they all know the way. "We will have lunch," Noyme says, "Then we will climb up there!" She points off into the very very distant distance across the valley. From where we stand I cannot even make out the top of the hill, or the path; just snow and dense, slush-coloured clouds. I am all set to say something witty, like, "You're kidding, right?" but by the time I turn around Noyme is already scampering daintily down the hill, and T. and I follow.
It turns out climbing down is nearly as difficult as climbing up, because the ground is so sandy if you put your foot the wrong way you can go sliding down- and this is a long way down. The sun is beating down on us, and we stop for lunch in a flat area (or what is known as "Inca flat"- up and down, up and down), by a river.
Fruitlessly we try and convince Noyme not to waste the porter's time setting up the tent, on such a beautiful afternoon, but this suggested deviance from protocol proves too much for her, and she tells us to go "get washed". It is only midday, and our faces are so choked with dust they turn our hands black in the water. This upsets T., who has hardly stopped complaining about her appearance since we set out.
After lunch we started up for the highest pass (4500 feet) and our legs start to feel like lead. Noyme seems to have forgotten about taking breaks (and asthmatic hikers) and by the time she pauses to see we are still with her I have started to wobble on my feet, or so T. tells me. Without missing a beat Noyme takes out a bottle of rubbing alcohol, pulls off one of my gloves and pours some into my hand.
We start up again, only now my hand is full of rubbing alcohol and I can't hold my walking stick (5 soles- literally and figuratively a crutch). On the next ridge I get more alcohol rubbed across my face. I have no idea if this is actually helping, or if she is just trying to make me feel better. The thought strikes me that even if I had wanted to turn back (which I certainly did not), there would be no way to do so. I look at T., who is wobbling on her feet. I admit this cheers me up slightly.
We reach the top, a flat area filled with stone cairns, offerings to the Pachamama (mother earth), and clouds so thick all around us we can barely see each other. Paul, who has been noticeably silent up until this point, suddenly announces he is a shaman and takes out yet another variety of potent-smelling liquor which he offers us before starting into a mono-syllabic chant, the meaning of which was never explained to us. We are told to exhale three times and make a wish. We do.
Below us is a deep green lake, surrounded by Andean geese. Noyme says just three more hours down, and then we camp for the night. A large herd of sheep pass by us in a perfect line. About 10 minutes later we round the corner and are greeted by a pitifully bleating and four tiny white legs. We spent almost an hour with the lamb, fretting about what to do with it, while Paul (who thought we were all ridiculous but recognized we were paying his salary) looked on. How strange it was to look out across from the mountain we were circling, across the valley all the way up to the peaks on the other side, and see no one. 
The campsite that night was right out of a postcard. By the time we arrived it was getting dark, and three ladies appeared (where do they just appear from?) untied the colourful shawls they (men and women) use to carry everything from pineapple to children, and tried to sell us Inca Kola by the lake. The best news was that we had been warned this night would be colder than the first, but as I could not imagine anything colder I didn't really notice a difference. We slept very early that night. This time I got at least an hour of sleep, and dreamed about hurricanes.
Our final morning was meant to be only 3 and a half hours, all down hill. I think T. and I were both a bit sad to be finishing up, just as we had started getting used to it --it being the dust, the wind, the throbbing in our legs and the struggle to breathe-- but when we suddenly found ourselves in a hamlet, complete with school and satellite dish, we were ready for the bus to take us back to "civilization".
Unfortunately, the roads from Ollanytaytambo (where the bus was coming from) had been closed for-- I don't know why they were closed. Noyme said we would follow the road to the next town, and maybe they would have a bus. Of course they didn't, and we spent the next four hours filling the road (as well as our shoes) with clouds of dust, as we raced towards town in time for our afternoon train. In all we added 11km to our hike (making our trek about as long as the Inca Trail, though they took an extra day), and they were the hardest of all, despite being downhill. We had one ten minute break, sitting on a wooden bench on the side of the road, with an elderly woman ladling out cicha from a black cauldron that came up to her shoulder.
We made it back to town, somehow, picked up our bags and took a cab to the train station, for a three hour ride to Auguas Calients (also Hot Water, after the springs nearby), the nearest town to Machu Picchu. T. and I were not sitting together, and I watched with fascination as the many fresh-smelling, well-rested looking tourists leaned awkwardly against the windows taking pictures of the same scenery I had just been walking through.
Auguas Calients is really just a glorified tourist market, with a few hotels and vastly over-priced net cafes thrown in. R. was not at the station as planned, so T. and I, utterly bewildered and coated in dust, found our way to the hotel, and parted company. On the way up the hill (if I never see another hill it will be too soon) I ran into the British barbies, who had taken the train from Cusco that morning, and were on their way for a massage. In my room I separated my clothes into Dirty and Danger, took pictures of my shoes (don't ask), and spent half an hour in the shower trying to clean the dirt out from between my fingers, and then gave up. In fact, some of it may still be there, but I hope not.
The next morning we got a wake up call (which we did not ask for) at quarter to 5, ate passion fruit in a dimly lit breakfast room, and then got lost on the way for to the Machu Picchu bus. It wasn't even light yet, but already the buses were pulling in and out, in a fairly un-South American routine. The bus ride took only about 20 minutes, but we seemed a world away from the day before, as here everything is lush and green and misty. 
The trekkers arrive, all giddy and bursting with inside jokes, and suddenly the sun splits the sky above the mountain (Machu Picchu actually means Old Mountain) and there is this giant... something, right there in front of us. It is mysterious and indescribable, everything it should be, and for those few seconds not even the flicker and click of hundreds of competing cameras could make it any less magical.
We linger some time by a sacrificial altar, ("for the sacrificing the youngest and purest girl") and as it is discovered that I am the youngest (two months younger than a Barbie, how disheartening) the killing is demonstrated on me, and I am "Baby", for the remainder of the trip. But to me, by far the most striking thing about M.P was the iconic sundial, which was seriously damaged a few years back-- by a malfunctioning crane, during the filming of a beer commercial.
After this there are more llamas, the search for an "Inca bridge", several hundred photographs, a train ride, a bus ride, and we make it back to Cusco around 9:30 at night. Rarely have I been so grateful for a full night's sleep.
