dah du da du

So a friends dad of mine here died on my birthday which was unfortunate and though the timing was less than ideal I suppose there is never a good time to die. But I realized there is a good time to live. Thus I spent the night staring at a dead body crying and comforting my friend. It was not an unexpected death but I finally got to experience being part of some really incredible traditions. There is a weeks worth of events in which at night friends come to support the family and pass solemn hours together. The week ends with the funeral procession. Where the immediate family is either carrying the casket or there are black ribbons attached and the walk behind holding the ribbons and sobing. In front of the casket walks rows and rows of flowers that people have donated and behind follows a van with a sound system attached on top. Everyone walks around the town with the body playing the deceased favorite songs and some just generally depressing songs about death and the loss of a loved one. Along with the sound system walks a crowd of people that are either friends of the deceased, distant family, aquaintences, or friends of the family. So picture like one hundred people for someone unpopular and more than two hundred for someone more important. This man was important and it made me reflect on what an effect one person can have on so many people and the importance of being a good parent so that your children can also have the chance to foster this kind of change. It was amazingly beautiful and saddening. Then comes the mass and the ulegy and after that you walk the body and the memory of the person to the cemetary. And for me this was the hardest part because it was the last chance to still feel close physically to this person, and the reality begins to set in that you will never see that person again. And everyone at this point was crying and holding hands and falling apart under the weight of loss. As you get to the cemetary there are more words of love and rememberance and then comes the sobbing and the wailing as they close the door to the tumb. And it was so emotionally draining and personally difficult because many of my old or repressed feelings were uprooted. So I spent two hours writing about the whole ordeal of past resentment and pain and then I felt much better. My hope is that no one else I know dies anytime soon because I do not think I could bear to do this again. So for anywhere from 3 months to a year the family dresses in black and does not smile or attend parties or dance. It is moving and every year after on the birthday and anniversary of their death they have a mass and then a gathering at someone´s home. The celebration of the dead and overall mourning process here seems so much healthier and complete to me. I think it would behoove Americans to adopt these kinds of traditions. But as always the life of the living continues so I decided to renovate the community garden which has mostly been a pain in my ass, trying to bring birth and growth into my life instead of disease and death. This type of symbolism more or less runs my mood here. And continued with teaching sex education and starting to work with mothers in the center of early childhood stimulation. For mother´s day which is a very big deal here I helped in giving away 300 gift baskets and did a dance performance for about 1000 mothers. Then headed to Lima for a training about project design management with a community partner. It was a very useful experience and I got to better know another character in my lifes drama. As I headed back home things went back to light speed and crazy coordination. I had another dance performance that night in a sort of talent show event. It was rather interesting because the dance was sexual in nature and I have tried to keep myself under wraps in this place but I suppose it was all exposed in this exposition. That weekend I also gained a great deal of respect for small scale agriculture as I learned how to harvest black eyed beans. It is rough you have to rip up the plant from the ground, put it in a small pile, compile the piles onto a large tarp, and then beat the hell out of piles with a stick to get the beans to fall out of their pod(in the blistering sun and leaving blistered hands). Afterwards you clean off the fragmented pods from the beans and put them in a sack. The men work at an incredible pace and as good as machines. The next day I held my recycling competition so that I could promote and continue the project with my youth group. I think that we will be selling next month but needless to say we have a load. Oh and I sold my first guinea pig, and am seriously getting ready to start a project because well eating guinea pigs is one step on the right track to decreasing the amount of cronic malnutrition here. The rate is 32% of children under the age of 5. I have done the math and plan on decreasing that rate to 22% by the time I am leaving. Which means I have to treat and prevent 99 cases. I think is highly unlikely and yet completely feasible. I have thanks to this recent training renewed my faith in having dreams and figuring out how to accomplish them. And am now trying to spread this technique to everyone I possibly can in this town. Because well we all say we have dreams and maybe we all do but there are the kind of broad dreams that we never accomplish and then there are the specific ones that we do. So the advice goes to all of you as well forget direction and get the exact address. That is the only way we arrive put a deadline (at least the year) of when you want to complete this dream, put the location, and the certain career, travel, habit and try to add some details without going overboard and then get there! Today I am getting the parent school set up, and training health promoters. Nothing in life comes easy, but the persistant are the ones who win and perhaps not in the time frame we want but the dream should never change. Keep chasing it until you get it and then chase a new one. Do this indefinately and you are undoubtly going to be successful and fulfilled.

Older

Well reflections on being older, I am not sure I really have any. I think that the less we worry about time the faster it goes. Things are going well I got busy again I have been teaching sex education in the high school. I organized a recycling competition and taught about how to separate trash. Presented my community diagnostic in a meeting where the authorities of my town were present. It appeared to be a very successful presentation because now people are realizing the importance to health promotion. The schools are implementing more plans and activities for the year. The municipality I believe will be funding my healthy households project though I may need assistance in the future for funding from you lovely people at home and all your wealthy connections. I will let you know. But pretty much $50 could make the difference to the healthy of a family, especially the children who are at the most risk of damage from smoke. Anyways, the parent school should be up and going this month where we are teaching about communication between parents and children. Trying to get more books for the library. My dance group absorbed most of my time recently as we had a dance competition in the capital city. Followed by another performance during a ceremony on Saturday which meant we were training every night of the week. There will be at least two more performances this week. Went to a psychic she told me some interesting things but I can only hope she is mistaken on the majority or else my stories will be getting much more interesting. The night before my birthday there was a dance in my town so went to shake it and brought in my birthday at midnight with a group of friends showering me in beer. The next day was mellow ceviche with some other friends and then dinner with some other friends. Pretty much food and drinking equals love and celebration here. It was all around nice but then reality returns and having to work my butt of again. Love yall thanks to those of you who remembered me.