Yeh, so I’m going to Peru. And I am not going there to visit ancient Incan sites and pick up some cheap alpacha hats. I am joining a group of engineering students and their professor (and a few other volunteers), and we will be traveling up into several remote Andean villages to work in partnership with the people there to install solar panels (to power vaccine fridges, emergency radios, etc.), install water systems (so villages can have potable water for the first time ever), and to bring assistive tech devices for disabled individuals. Etcetera. The list of proposed activities boggles the mind. How could so much be accomplished in only two weeks?
Well, I am told that once we are there, we will have to be flexible and will find that some projects will get stalled and others will arise that are unplanned. The Village Empowerment Project has been working in partnership with villagers in Peru for over ten years, making two trips a year. Students work on projects stateside to help fill identified needs in Peru. Then, some of those students actually travel to Peru to install their systems and learn how to adapt and modify on location if their designs do not work. Flexibility is key.
And what is an English Professor like myself doing on such a trip? Yeh, I’ve been wondering that, too! I was asked by the engineering professor to join them in January in order to help participants (mostly the engineering students) to reflect more broadly and deeply on the significance and implications of their service-learning experience. We English types are pretty good at that sort of thing. Also, I am going to help document the experience by recording various interviews and sounds along the way, in hopes of creating a series of radio essays.
I have also just been asked to work with one of the students more closely. She needs one more General Education course to graduate in the spring and has no room in her schedule to take another course in spring term. She would have to miss the Peru trip and stay home and take a January Gen Ed course if I didn’t agree to take her on as a student. I don’t mind, though, as I am doing some reading anyway about Peruvian women, and so it’s no big amount of trouble to supervise the student as well and get her some credit for a Gender Studies course.
I’ve begun my search for texts in earnest and I can’t wait to begin reading. Just a few of the titles that appeal to me: The Call of God: Women Doing Theology in Peru by Tom Powers, Sellers and Servants: Working Women in Lima, Peru by Ximena Bunster and Elsa M. Chaney, Fire from the Andes: Short Fiction by Women from Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru edited by Susan Benner and Kathy Leonard, and The Gift of Life: Female Spirituality and Healing in Northern Peru by Bonnie Glaser-Coffin. I’m sure I’ll be sharing more on those later once I begin reading.
So, what on earth am I thinking…? Well, I am scared, excited, hopeful, worried, and contemplative. I keep thinking that in some yet unforseen way this Peru trip will enhance what I am doing with Grandma’s book. I really don’t have a clue why I think that. I mean, these are pretty distinctly different activities…but I still feel so completely sure that some connection will arise, that some change in me will occur, that something deeply significant is about to happen to me and I need to let it occur. Maybe this is part of grieving — gaining a radically new perspective? Maybe I’ll be gaining insight into what it’s like to live on the edge economically, as Grandma’s family had to do during the Great Depression? Maybe what I read in preparation for the journey will teach me something important about my own writing? I’ve tried to figure out why I feel so compelled to do this and why I feel so sure it relates to Grandma’s memoir (the project I am supposed to be working on right now). I still haven’t got a clue. But I’m going to Peru in January. And that’s that.
No comments:
Post a Comment