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Published: March 12th 2007
Hi again! Well my final week in Umanes is over. I better get the basic details over with to start - I was meant to fly to Lima on Saturday to begin the tour of Peru, but due to various travel insurance and altitude issues the travel agent that runs the tour have decided that they won´t take me on the tour, which is extremely annoying, although I´m much more sad about missing the people than I am about misssing the tour. But I am now pretty sure that I can start my next project early so hopefully this time next week I will be in the rainforest!
Anyway, will focus on my last week in Umanes now. The start of the week began and the water supply was almost complete, so we started painting murals for Umanes to remember us by in addition to the digging. We (or rather one or two of the more artistic members of the group) came up with two designs, one for the side of the water tower, and one for the wall on the side of the potato storage shack where we have spent the last five weeks living. It turns out
that mixing paint is more complicated than you might think, and we ended up wasting half of it by mixing it with thinner instead of water. We were also rather short on paint brushes, so much finger painting was involved: finger painted pigs, finger painted flowers, finger painted children... This caused slight problems, as the paint was practically impossible to get off. At the end of Wednesday´s painting session, somehow a paint fight was initiated... this was possibly not the best idea in the world, given the stubborness of the paint. The five of us involved ended up covered in paint from head to toe. Taylor had attractive yellow and green eyelashes, Vicky had streaks all through her hair, and it soaked through all of our clothes as well... After 20 minutes the novelty began to wear off... after 30 minutes scrubbing under an excrutiatingly cold shower to little effect we were all beginning to regret the decision...
Wednesday was the final day of lessons, and we all had to set exams for the children. Our class has always been small, and only about 8 kids showed up to do the exam... scores ranged from 8 out of 87
to about 64. We wrote them all certificates anyway. By this point it was really starting to feel like things were coming to an end, and everyone was getting sentimental.
Thursday was our last day in Umanes. There was to be a festival, in which we were expecting to dance (oh god), and in the afternoon there would be a party for the children. We were running on Peruvian time, so of course the festival started an hour and a half late, by which point everyone was complaining about lunch, which had to be postponed. After a while the locals began to trickle in, and the costumes were even more colourful than usual... there were some men with what first appeared to be rather graphic hats on, but later turned out to be masks with very long noses, much to our relief. Also in attendence were what we could only assume was the Peruvian answer to The Village People, with people dressed up as builders and nurses... we waited with baited breath for an outburst of the YMCA, but instead were rewarded with the mayor of Chinchero getting up to give a speech. Hannah, the regional manager, raised the
Peruvian flan, and then we all went on a walk to celebrate the new water supply.
First stop was the water tower where a bottle of champagne was suspended on in an arch decorated with loo roll... either Nick or Hannah (can´t quite remember) smashed the bottle, and then Nick climbed up the water tower (with one of our murals - half the Peruvian flag, half the Union Jack, and the madventurer symbol in the middle) to unveil the madventurer plaques, one of which had all of the volunteers names on it (complete with a number of interesting spellings, including team "leder" Nick=), and one of which had the names of all the local dignitaries. After that we went to an outdoor courtyard in which "we" (I´m not sure how much we helped) had installed a tap. Again, a bottle of champagne was smashed, and then Nick went for the tap. After a worrying initial splutter, the water spurted out, much to the relief of all present.
We returned to the compound and more speeches were given, and then the Peruvian dancing. First up was the dance with the funny masks, which apparently was meant to be a
representation of the Peruvian war with Chile, and involved mocking the Chilean army by portraying them all as drunkards with bottles in their hands. After that was the first of two dances that we were to perform... I would like to state at this point that I had nothing to do with the choreography or the choice of music... it was just the girls for this dance, and we performed a Britney Spears style routine to the song "Paris to Berlin" by Vernon. The locals simply stared at us in a bemused fashion. We were all a little embarassed... I don´t think they understood the cultural aspect of our routine.
Next up was a play by the locals, and we finally worked out what the purpose of The Village People costumes were. Or we sort of did. Apparently the basic plot of the play was that the people from the Andes migrated to the jungle where they did lots of hard work... but then they all got sick in the jungle and no one knew who they were or what language they spoke... and then for some reason they spoke english and they all had names such as donkey,
and steve... it was all very strange. The locals were in hysterics. Not a lot really happened visually except they all danced about and fell over and pretended to have fits on the floor, and this woman dressed as a nurse went around stabbing people in the bum with a plastic syringe...
After that came another chance for us to perform... hoorray... this time it was the whole group dancing to Amarillo. The locals were a lot more enthusiastic about it, and even started clapping along at various points... at the end we dragged all the kids into a conga line. I think they may have been a little afraid.
More speeches followed. Then the mayor of Chinchero presented each of the volunteers with a mug and a certificate. Then, finally, two and a half hours late, it was lunch! The locals were having the same food that we had at the opening ceremony, but seeing as that gave half the group ecoli we opted out, and instead had chicken, chips and salad cooked for us by our cook Sarah. We were all very excited as we entered the kitchen and saw two absolutely massive cakes, a bin
full of popcorn, and lots of other party food arranged on the tables. Various people started discussing tactics for maiming the children so that there would be more for us... I promise that none of it went ahead...
After lunch we gave the children who had been in our class certificates, even little Evelyn who didn´t speak Spanish, only Quechua, and only scored 8 on the exam. But she was very sweet. All the kids wanted their photos taken, especially the boys with their friends. Then we all dished out cake (luckily there was plenty left, although it looked more satisfying than it tasted). Nick had bought two pinatas, one for the boys and one for the girls. They were tied to the roof of the kitchen and we spent ages getting the kids to line up in a orderly fashion and arranging blindfolds, only for the second girl in the line to break the pinata open. Chaos ensued, as Hannah yelled at Nick to knock the boys one down as well before they all came piling in on top of the girls. Then there was basically a fight on the floor. A number of volunteers came away with
crush injuries. Lots of children were crying, so Hannah gave us some extra sweets to throw out into the crowd. By this point, a number of the volunteers had lost all sense of dignity and were shamlessly beating away the children whilst jumping for the sweets themselves, which was a little unfair considering that the average height of a Peruvian child is about 4 ft, and some of the volunteers reached about 6ft 3.
I think it must have been some time around then that the dancing started... Some of the locals were already rather drunk, owing to the combination of beer and home brewed wine. Resultingly, speeces were spouting, and the men were rather liberal with the compliments...all the girls were very beautiful. In fact the world in general was beautiful. Everything was just beautiful. We began with traditional Peruvian music and dancing, but after a while Veronica and Carla, the mayor´s children, bought out their U2 cd. Much hillarious dancing ensued. I spent a fair ammount of time just standing around laughing at the others and videoing them.
The dancing went on... and on... and on... at about 6 some of the locals started to leave,
The Tree dance
I can´t remember whether I put this in the blog... This was an imitation of the carnival dance at which Nick cut down the tree, except there is a small child dressed as a tree instead of a tree...and everyone was crying. Someone bought an i pod out and we spent the next few hours dancing to western music with the Peruvian kids. By 9, everyone was completely exhausted, and a fair few people were feeling a bit worse for wear from alcohol. Most of us retreated to the kitchen, leaving only the locals and a few hard core volunteers dancing. For some reason we spent the next hour singing disney songs very loudly and badly before going to bed at about 10.30.
Friday morning was spent packing, and then saying goodbye to the locals and hugging and crying some more. Then we all got on the bus to Cusco and waved goodbye to Umanes for the last time. As much as we all complained about the cold, the lack of showers, the kids when they were bratty, digging in the rain, the lack of things to do, I think we were all sad to see it go, and it will stay with us for the rest of our lives.
Unfortunately when we got back to Cusco I was told that I wouldn´t be able to go on the tour of Peru. I spent the rest
of the day trying to make the most of the last hours with the other volunteers. Everyone went out together for a meal in the evening, and we presented Nick with various presents. Taylor made a speech in which he thanked god that Nick hadn´t turned out to be either a fascist or a green peace hippy.
The next morning people started trickling away on flights to Lima, and there were tears. Four other members of the group stayed in Cusco until today, but at lunch time I waved the last of them off. I´m left feeling rather bereft... but I´m glad that I now know mostly what I´m doing over the next week, so I have something to aim for. I should only have a few aimless days before I am off to the rainforest, so that´s something entirely new to get excited about!
Missing you all and hope everyone is well xxx
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What is the shopping like in the rain, forest I wonder Love Mum