Random thoughts and anecdotes

This past Saturday, I played fulbito (mini-soccer) with some youth from Kilometer 13 church and the surrounding neighborhood. They were all a whole lot better than I was, but they were still nice enough to let me play. If I play every Saturday, maybe by the end of the year, I’ll be halfway decent.

After the worship service at Santa Isabel on Sunday, I went to lunch at the house of Juan Ambrosio and his family. Juan is the president of the consistorio (the church’s governing body) of Santa Isabel, and he’s the person who has designed the schedule for my placement there. In the back of the house, they have a little pen filled with guinea pigs. When I saw the guinea pigs, I hesitantly asked Juan if they were pets or food, even though I already knew the answer. Of course, he told me they were for food. They were just so cute though…. We didn’t eat guinea pig for lunch that day, we just had soup. But I learned in orientation that guinea pig (known as “cuy” in Peru) is a Peruvian delicacy, especially in the mountains/rural areas, so I’ll probably have to eat it some time. Because it’s such a special food, you can’t really politely refuse it. To decline cuy would be very offensive.


As Young Adult Volunteers, our job isn’t really to teach the people in our placement sites how we do things as “advanced,” “modern” westerners. Really, we’re just supposed to be present and form meaningful relationships, rather than produce tangible changes or “improvements.” We should be doing more listening than talking and more learning than teaching. But I think I might have to break this rule in order to teach the congregations of Kilometer 13 and Santa Isabel something that will revolutionize the way they experience contemporary Christian music. It’s rather simple: you clap your hands on beats 2 and 4, not 1 and 3. Those of you who aren’t musically inclined might not know what I’m talking about, but if you are, you probably know EXACTLY what I mean. Unless the band is practicing the song for the first time and doesn’t have a drummer, you just don’t clap on 1 and 3. When they learn this, it’s gonna be big…


A couple weeks ago, I went to a concert at the UBL (University Biblica Latinamerica) by a group called Siembra. Siembra is a Christian folkloric Peruvian music group. Quite simply, they were amazing. They sing beautiful harmonies about God, peace, and the Peruvian people and land. Their instruments include the guitar, a drum, churango (mini-guitar) and zampoña (or something like that – I can never remember what it’s called, let alone how it’s spelled – it’s basically windpipes). They kinda sound like the Peter Paul and Mary of Peru. They’ve been around for awhile and have made a lot of CDs – I bought a double CD “anthology” at the end of the concert for a whopping 10 sols (about $3.50). If you like folk/acoustic/Spanish/traditional music, you should look them up.


Damaris calls me “Aleps.” She’s perfectly capable of saying “Alex,” but for some reason, she prefers “Aleps.” Don’t ask me why. I first thought this was pretty annoying, and I used to correct her every time she said it. But now I think it’s kind of endearing.


This past week, I was finally asked to pray in front of everybody for the first time. Twice, in fact. Once before “class” started in the Compassion program, and another time at the end of worship this past Sunday at Santa Isabel. I won’t say it was a piece of cake, but I got through it. At least God knew what I was trying to say…


I’ve finally figured out why all the food here is so heavy on grains and meat! It’s just because that’s what Peruvians consider to be a balanced diet. I discovered this in the kitchen of Kilometer 13 Church, where the cooks prepare the kids’ lunches in the Compassion program. Painted on the wall of the kitchen is Peru’s version of the “Food Guide Pyramid.” Except instead of a pyramid, it’s a pie graph (no pun intended). The pie graph has three sections: grains, meats/dairy, and fruits/vegetables. Grains account for 60% - and included in the “grains” group picture is flour, potatoes, rice, SODA, VEGETABLE OIL, and CANDY. Yes, I’m not kidding, there is a picture of a bottle of vegetable oil, a bottle of “Inca Cola” (the local favorite soft drink), and pieces of candy included in this nutrition graph. The meats and dairy section of the graph accounts for 30%, and the “fruits AND vegetables section only gets 10%. Yes, this is quite odd from our point of view. But it makes sense to me, because these percentages are pretty much exactly what I’ve had to here in Lima for the past month.


I have decided that the reason soccer isn’t popular to watch on TV in the United States is money. Soccer is non-stop action. There are no timeouts except for halftime. There are only quick moments of downtime when someone gets injured and after a team scores a goal (but it’s pretty common to have games in which no goals are scored). Even when there’s a penalty, the “quick restart” is part of the strategy of the game. For these reasons, you just can’t show commercials during soccer broadcasts. It doesn’t work. Instead, of futbol, we watch football, which is the KING of convenient breaks in the action to show commercials – timeouts, changes of possession, quarter breaks, touchdowns, field goals, etc. (Don’t forget my favorite – the “two minute warning.” Ha!) “America’s pastime,” baseball, requires breaks every half inning, and in basketball each team gets a million timeouts. Soccer is the most popular sport all over the world except for the US…. Hmmmm, maybe now we know why.