New Friends, a New Home, and a New School

While some might assume it to be a hindrance, traveling as a man with two children, one of whom is Chinese with certain mobility problems, has actually proved to be of some advantage on this trip. We certainly are not inconspicuous; people notice us, they are curious, and they take the time to talk. Consequently, we have met a number of wonderful Peruvians on our trip already. We also have the advantage of time. Because we are here for a longer stay, we don’t have to run from site to site to feel like we’ve seen the highlights; rather we can take the time to just hang out and experience the life of the city. Although it also seems true that people have more time to talk. Making generalizations is always a risky business, but based on the little I’ve seen and the conversations I’ve had, life seem much more laid back here. People, of course, work hard and try to better themselves, but the satisfaction with one’s life seems much less to do with how much stuff one has than with one’s relations with family and friends. On the other hand there are the poor campesinos in the surrounding countryside and those who have migrated to the city who have essentially nothing and are willing to do almost anything to survive. These people are not able to feed, cloth, and shelter their families and until these essential needs are met, higher order goals such as kin and community ties are simply not of great concern. The middle class households that we’ve seen, and we’ve been lucky enough to see a few, are very simple compared with how we live in the U.S., yet their inhabitants are very happy and seem to derive great satisfaction from interaction with their families and with new friends like us. I’m struck by the latter over and over again. We came to town with the names of a few people, all friends of friends of friends and the couple of people we have contacted have gone out of their way to help us, to invite us into their homes and, in turn, to introduce us to their friends and families who again have gone out of their way to help us. We’ve had meals in people’s houses, we have an invitation to attend an acquaintance’s grandfather’s birthday party so we could sample her mother’s world famous, locally known, cuy (guinea pig), restaurant staff have doted on our children and invited us back for “special” meals, etc.. Before we left the states, a friend asked if I knew anyone in Cusco and I told him about the four degrees of separation contacts and we discussed the degree to which we would go out of our way for someone who called out of the blue saying they were a friend of someone who was very good friends with your niece or someone whose mother lived in the same development as their mother. To what degree would you help such a person?

We’ve finally moved into a house and Zak and Maya have finally started school. The house is much better than the little hotel room we were in and is actually quite a bit nicer than the other adobe houses in the neighborhood. The house has a nice view but the best features are the two girls, who are about Maya´s age and younger, and their older brother, who is slightly older than Zak, who live in the house next door and with whom we share a garden. The kids have been having a great time playing together. But we were even more excited about getting the kids enrolled in the Colegio Pukllasunchis which is a Quechuan word that means basically “to play.” In one of those little twists that keeps life interesting, the builder of our house, and our landlord, is the same man who built the school the kids are attending. The school is not that close to our house and instead of a school bus, the kids are going to get picked up and dropped off by a taxi which also transports other kids to the same school. The school is very progressive and is supported largely by donations. Students come from both the wealthiest and the poorest families in the city with the former subsidizing the latter. There are also a number of students from different countries. I considered sending Zak to a more traditionally rigid school so he could get the full cultural immersion but I know that both he and Maya will have a much easier time adjusting at Pukllasunchis.