Tower raising

Putting up our water tower was a little like an Amish barn raising. The boys built two sides, dug deep holes, then collected a whole bunch of our neighbors in the back of the truck to come and hoist the heavy pieces up and into place.

Some lifted, some placed braces, some heaved with ropes. I was pretty scared during the whole process and hid in the house. There was a lot of yelling and hollaring and guys running round in an excited manner, waving their arms, telling each other what to do. If those beams had dropped, they would have killed whoever was beneath them.
I came out and documented after it was all over.

Baby

I'm trying to put pictures in my blog. It's not working too well. This is the only one going through, and it is pretty random. Carly and I rode into town today with this little baby, eating her breakfast orange. Cute.

Abuela

I sat on the plane from Atlanta to Lima next to a Peruvian grandmother. She was short and round, and her chin melted into her chest.

I said good afternoon to her and she was off, telling me about her seven children and twenty-three grandchildren, who lived in Peru, Chile, and the United States. She said she liked to live in all three places, and she thought the food in Chile was particularly fantastic.

She talked with her eyes wide open, using her arms for emphasis, and every sentence ran into the next. I couldn't press a single comment in.

She stopped and gasped for a breath. She said, suddenly, "Oh! How cute your Spanish is!"

And then, she leaned right over and patted my cheek.

Thanks, grandma.

Family

Cousin Jonah

I am now the shortest of all the cousins, except for Jonah

Grandpa and Uncle Tim making ice cream

Family picture with Papa

Beth and Grandma on Mother's day

Wedding

Paul and Petra prepare to tie the knot

The wedding choir

The bundled bride and groom

Mis padres lindos

Different

My impulse language is Spanish. After 10 months in Peru, my first reaction to someone handing me change is "¡Gracias!" and when I'm leaving a store I call "Buenas tardes," over my shoulder. I have to bite my tongue to keep from responding to my parents' questions in Spanish, and I'll sit at the dinner table and translate the conversation back into Español in my head.

The people here are very tall, and very pale. The check out person at the grocery store was not very friendly yesterday.

There is no trash along the highways. There are also no taxis, no chickens in the streets, no motocars.

I love the running water in my house. I love turning the lights on, and then off.

Most of all, and this is the best part about being home, I love seeing my friends and my family. I love going jogging with my mom in the morning, eating fruit smoothies with Grandma Carolyn, staying up until the middle of the night with my friend Rika. I love reading "Jorge el Curioso" to baby Jonah and making cookies with Petra, my cousin to be.

Petra is marrying my cousin Paul, hence a wedding and a family reunion. And this is why I am here, in the States.

But I am going back. I fly to Lima again on Wednesday.

And in the confusion of going back and forth, I realize that home is wherever I am, wherever I choose to find rest. Home is in the ant-ridden jungle, and home is in the chilly western woods of Maryland.

I'm really happy to eat lettuce, to take hot showers and sleep burrowed under a down comforter. But I'm glad to return to cook rice and platano, to hike through the mud to church, and to find our little dog, Lola, waiting for me on our doorstep.

And a few more

Snapshots

I've been sorting through the year in pictures, organizing and making slideshows and burning CDs for the other teamsters. Here are a few of my favorites, all a little random, which never made the blog.

Machu Picchu

I was pretty excited to visit Machu Picchu last week with my parents. Sadly, my camera was stolen a few days later, and at this point I can't load photos. But you can picture the smiling parents and sister of the Howe family, perched above this ancient Inca ruin. We sure did have a good time.

Photo by Hiram Bingham.

McPapas

I'm sitting at McDonald's on a leather couch, eating McPapas, the Peruvian version of french fries. This is the classiest and cleanest McDonald's I've ever seen.

Leather couches? Seriously!

Across the street I can see the massive and imposing Embajada de los Estados Unidos de America, or the American Embassy. It is circumferenced by a Jericho wall, painted a slick gray.

The first time I saw the embassy was on Monday, shortly after I hugged my parents goodbye in the Lima airport. The taxi driver pointed, "There it is, the temple of your country."

Oddly enough, it did kind of look like a temple. A really big, impersonal rectangular one. I was immediately embarrassed by the size and grandiose nature of the place.

My passport was stolen on Sunday morning, hence the trip to the embassy for a new one. Along with my passport, I lost my camera, wallet, guidebook, and every form of ID that I had. It wasn't, as you can imagine, the best of days. I was thankful to have my father's shoulder to have a little cry upon.

Now I'm doing a lot of waiting. A lot of making plans, then changing them again. A lot of paperwork and phonecalls and forms and proving my identity with a police report.

I wasn't allowed to enter the embassy on Monday afternoon, because they only passport cases in the mornings. Then Tuesday was a national Peruvian holiday, and the offices were closed. I finally was able to get the process started this morning, Wednesday.

Oddly enough, I didn't see a single American during my entire morning at the embassy. I guess I kind of imagined the buildings would be filled with smiling and English speaking North Americans, who would say kind things like, "Hey, we'll take care of you, our own flesh and blood." Alas, it was not to be.

Throughout security, paperwork, background checks, and solemn oaths to insure I really was who I said I was, all the facilitators were Peruvians who spoke to me in Spanish. The doors were dreadfully heavy, the security officers tense, the reds and blues of the flag faded in the hazy Lima sunshine.

As I passed out through the gates, still needing to return yet another time for my passport, I wanted to shake the embassy chill off of me. It is a no-man's land, not really Peru, certainly not the States, not a place that wants to claim me.

I came to McDonald's to watch the kids play in the McJuegos, and to eat McPapas. I'm feeling better.

Sick baby day

Today was sick baby day. I don't know why, but for some reason all the sickest little ones came today, on Tuesday, all together in the afternoon, when we were beginning to get foot sore and weary.

Some were limp over their mother's shoulders, cheeks mushed, too weak to hold up their heads.

Jenni calls them fever babies. "We've got another fever baby here," she'll tell me.

Great.

That means I have to give a shot.

Patient after patient, they bring their prescription slips from the doctor to the pharmacy window, and I pull up the teeny cocktails of ceftriaxona, gentamicina, dexamethasona, and metamizol sódico in the syringes, the different thicknesses of medicine swirling together.

We drape the babies over their mother's laps, bottom up, and while the mom firmly holds the torso, Karen pins down the legs and thighs for me. Usually the babies start craying way before the actual needle stick. The wailing begins as they are placed on their tummies and see a white girl in blue scrubs fussing with alcohol and cotton.

But they scream later, when the medicine infuses into their little muscles. They scream so hard they forget to breathe, then choke as they gasp for air. I put on a cute colorful bandaid, and Karen gives out stickers, but it doesn't seem to help much.

I feel terrible. I hate to make them cry.

So today, when it was just one sick baby after another, I wore out real fast. In a few families we even had to give shots to siblings, which was a traumatic experience for all involved, especially the mothers.

I got to my eleventh or twelfth shot and my hands were trembling. The screaming was getting under my skin.

"Jenni, can you help me?" I asked.

I gladly traded with her and took over crowd control.