We have left PSF.
It was hard enough, but we finally managed. It has
really become a home to us, even with all the inconveniences. In the beginning, we had said to stay for at least two months, maybe even three, and everybody was happy to see some people, who would grow into things and take over a project here and there. We didn´t fulfill our promise, sorry.
We stayed at Pisco Sin Fronteras at a moment, when there have been more volunteers than ever before: Over 60 people. In the end, I must admit, I became jealous of everybody leaving. We have been staying in the hallway for four weeks, no one has ever before been staying there this long.
PSF rents two houses. They are across the street from each other. In one house are the rooms for living, some bathrooms, a porch and a small garden, in which you can sit and wash your clothes, or, if you had a day off work earlier, you can enjoy the sun, or surf on the internet, wireless or on the installed computer. In this house live about twenty to thirty people in different rooms, up to six in one. The other house is for the morning- and dinner meetings. There is an entrance, an entrance hall, a room with four beds, closed by a improvised door, a toilet, the hallway and the kitchen. Out of the kitchen, you walk into the open, a room with only a sturdy sheet as roof, which is tied to the walls by ropes, and flying in the wind. There are tables and a big mixture of chairs, wooden, plastic ones with armrests and without, green blue and white. Some volunteers live in hostals nearby.
All sixty people are expected to show up for breakfast, because the first thing in the morning, before breakfast, is the morning meeting, led by a volunteer. New people have to "stand up, where are you from, how long will you stay, how did you hear about PSF, and tell us something interesting about yourself". That is the hardest part. Afterwards, people who are leaving can say some words, and then we are listening to other announcements, things that are on peoples minds. After that is done, the job manager takes over.
There is a whiteboard, on which he puts the names of the people, that apply for the different jobs. He explains, what is going on on the different job sites, and we raise our hands to apply. Only when this is done, we can start to have breakfast. The morning meeting takes place at eight, we go off to the sites at nine.
Nadège and I have been living in the hallway for four weeks. Every morning, around six thirty, Carolina and some volunteers have started to prepare breakfast in the kitchen. Carolina liked to sing a little, while doing this. Scrambled eggs, hot water for tea and coffee, bread, jam, sometimes cheese and ham. In the last week fruit salad has become very popular, and I loved it also. Some people prepare their own cornflakes with milk or yoghurt.
You can imagine, that the night is over for us, if you are not dead-tired, or your earplugs are tightening the ears to minus one hundred decibels. Soon, people start showing up, the early birds. And to get to the kitchen, everybody has to pass through the hallway. Then, they have the idea to go to the bathroom, pass the hallway again. Coming back, have forgotten something. There is a knock on the door. Someone has to go, to open it. Hungry breakfast people. Everyone is passing the hallway, back and forth. I have been getting used to it, but it is not something, I am going to miss.
We stayed in PSF for four weeks now, and we were living in the hallway for four weeks. There are things, I will miss about PSF, others, I will rather not miss. One of the latter is the door to the room in our house. The hallway doesn´t have a door, it is the hallway. Privacy is only been given by an old mosquito net, that someone has hung in front of the bed a long time ago. The beds are bunkbeds, one for me, one for Nadège, we both slept in the bottom ones. They were at least comfortable.
The door to the room is only a wooden board, fixed to the wall with some screws. The trick of the door is, that it closes by itself, once you let it go. Someone has tied a thin rope to the inner side. This rope runs through hooks and has a weight tight to at the end. Unfortunately, the rope is scratching on the insides of the hook. The rope is thus vibrating like the string of a violine. The door, the flat wooden board, is amplifying this vibration to an ear penetrating sound, anamalious. It sounds like Lord Dracula opening the lid of his sarcophage at sunset to go off hunting. I am not going to miss this sound.
The Peruvian seems not to be needing a lot of sleep. At six thirty in the morning, there are honking mototaxis, huge trucks, small busses, collectivos and all kinds of vehiculars passing by the house. Some Peruvians are riding on reconstructed bicyles. There is one wheel in the back, instead of handlebars, there is a big wooden box to transport things in. Often, they have cheap loudspeakers installed at the sides of the box. They sell bananas or advocados. The peruvian name for advocado is "Palta". As if no one knew, that the fruitmarket on wheels is not showing up at six thirty every morning, there is massively loud shouting "Palta, palta, palta...", amplyfied by cheap speakers, and at the same time honking.
In Pisco, there is at least one dog with every house. We also saw many wild dogs, but they mostly at least belong to a special area. PSF has two dogs: Manches (from Manchester United...) and gringo. Gringo means foreigner. Manches is four years old, friendly and relaxed. Gringo is no more than one and a half year old. He has been living with PSF when he still was a puppy. He was so cute, that the volunteers used to take him in their beds. He got used to the gringos, no wonder, that now, this is his name. outside of the house lives one more dog, Francis. Francis is wild, but he lives besides the house. He gets a scrap of food here and there, he is skinny like a ghost. Manches is friendly and quiet. Everybody likes him. To the gringos, meaning us, the vonlunteers, gringo is nice also, he accepts his position being the lowest in the hirarchy. He is angry at Peruvians, though. He barks at them, and scares them away, whenever a Peruvian walks on the street in front of the house. Maybe he thinks, he has to protect us. And Francis, stupid Francis thinks, this is the right thing to do. He is not one of the dogs belonging to PSF, so his standing in the hirarchy of PSF is even lower than that of Manches and Gringo. To be accepted anyways, Francis helps Gringo barking off the Peruvians. And he does this with all his power, preferably at ten at night, when we go to bed, and at six thirty in the morning, when the Peruvians start to go to work.
Talking about traffic...
There were many different ways we got from A to B. The most popular in Pisco probably was by Mototaxi or moto, Westerners better known as Tuk-Tuks. One driver in the front, steering one wheel, shifting on the handle, like riding a motorbike. A small plastic cabin, that is covering a bench with enough room for three people, normal size. Two stroke engine, that can go fourty kilometers per hour maximum speed. There is a small competition going on inside the Tuk-Tuk-driver-community. Who has the loudest sound-system installed. Only a very old Tuk-Tuk with a very old driver, that doesn´t have the pride to join the competition, is not on the street with the most popular Latino-rhythms barking across the streets.
One ride from the PSF-headquarter to the Plaza de Armas, the center of the town, costs one sole fifty. We often even had to take a moto to the working sites. Three people in the back, three shovels, one spade,
one steelbar and a wheel-barrow on top of the moto, tided with a rope. Even the Peruvians had to laugh at the seight. I am going to miss the rides in the Tuk-tuks!
PSF owns a truck. One of the founders of the organization has bought it with his private money and later sold it to the organization, who paid him with foundation-money. That it ran was a miracle. The steering wheel had half a twist to eather side, where nothing would happen, there were no lights, the windows were down all the way on both sides. The front windshield had some cracks but was, compared to many other windshields, I have seen, in a good shape. We had to push it every morning to get it running, because the starter didn´t work any more. The engine worked, the steering and the brakes, fair enough. It was a pick-up truck with a platform in the back. To some working sites, a little further off, we had to take this truck. Three people in the front, the other five in the back of the truck. The police on the Panamericana saw the Voluntario-Truck and waved at us. Sometimes the driver killed the engine on the Panamericana, so we had to go to the side and push it, to get it started again.
I am going to miss the rides on the back of the truck!
I was bitten by a dog. We decided to go to the Cuban doctors, the next day. The service of the Cuban doctors is for free, viva socialism! The Cuban hospital is in San Clemente, on the other side of the Panamericana, ten minutes out of Pisco. The easiest way to get there is by combi. A combi is a small bus, that goes along the streets until it is full. Only then, it starts to aim at his final destination. So, from the PSF-headquarter we took a Tuk-Tuk to the Plaza de Armas, then a combi to la cruze, the cross on the Panamericana, where the main streets goes to Pisco, and then another Tuk-Tuk to go to the Cuban doctors. Tuk-Tuk one sole fifty, combi one sole fifty per person, Tuk-Tuk in San Clemente another sole. That´s cheap!
I will miss cheap rides in the combi!
The alternative would be, to take a taxi from PSF to the doctors. That would cost about twelve to fifteen soles. Or you could take a collectivo. That is a taxi, that takes more people in along the way, so you all divide the costs of a normal taxi-ride. We are now in Nasca. We were lucky, we got here with friends from PSF, who had bought themselves their own car in Chile, a Nissan
four-wheel-drive. They are on their way to the south now. When they found out, that we wanted to go to Nasca, which is about four hours south of Pisco, they invited us to go with them in their car. That´s what we did.
The alternative would be to take a bus. There are the Soyuz busses, that stop randomly along the road to pick up passengers. They are about five soles for a one hour ride. The safer way is to take a long-distance bus.
There are different companies: Cruz del Sur, Oltursa, Flores and others. They have clear routes, for example from Lima to Nasca, or from Nasca to Arequipa, without stop, without opening up the doors. Comfortable seats, food, a movie, two drivers, that take turns on longer rides. One ride is eighty soles per person or one hundred for a sleeping-chair. That is what we will do this night, to go from Nasca to Arequipa.
Traffic...
Two stroke Tuk-Tuks with High-End Latino music, all kinds of old and very old trucks, huge sometimes, old cars, collectivos, combis and bicycles. All go off at six thirty in the morning. Gringo and Manches wake up and
start to bark at Peruvians going to work, Francis, who wants to be part of the gringo-family joins in with all his force. The walking fruit-market yelling "Palta, palta, palta". All this is an incredible mixture of noise, early in the morning, which I am not going to miss!
What else I am going to miss?
Carolina singing in the morning. She saying "I love you!" to almost every gringo, but saying it with the biggest smile, so you just have to believe her. Little ironic hits by Itay. I can honestly say, that Itay and LiPeng have become our best friends in PSF. Religious signs everywhere. Often Jesus or the Holy Mary, wearing a skirt in a triangular way, thus a christian picture with an old inca symbol hidden inside. Pisco-Sour, the national drink of the peruvians. Pisco pure is like some kind of Grappa, it is produced almost the same way. This is the recipe for one Pisco-Sour:
- Clara de un Huevo
- Cubitos de Hielo
- Un medida de limon (Jugo, 25ml)
- Tres medidas de Pisco
- Dos medidas de Jarabe de Goma
Shake in shaker and pour out. Yummie!
What I will not miss?
Rubblestreets, the smell of the toilet next to my bed, coming home from work all dirty and sweaty and the water and electricity is off, so no shower, darkness and freaze as soon as the sun is down, around eight o´
clock at night, fighting with the jackhammer, but you can´t get the rock out, thought is works most of the times, and that satisfaction is like digging goldnuggets.
There is much more, or much less to say about Pisco Sin Fronteras. It has been our family for four weeks, we enjoyed it a lot. Digging in the backyard of a poor family, helping them to improve their lifes is so very satisfying, that experience is awesome, everyone should do it once in his life! The friendship of the volunteers at PSF is great, especially by working together on the worksite makes you know each other very fast and well.
We will be back!
Greetings,
Stefan & Nadége 23.th of October 2009