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Published: March 28th 2007
Finally, my spoken spanish is slowly improving - with the help of my daily 2 hour lessons and copious homework. Although I often suffer from brain fatigue and smoke curling out of my ears, it’s really enjoyable and both my grammar and conversational teachers are very good. Our lessons are often on the rooftop patio overlooking the stunning view of Cusco below and the Andes Mountains surrounding us. I chose this school over all the others because of their ethics. It was founded by a successful Dutch businessman who decided that he wanted to do something meaningful with his life. After wandering around South America he ended up here in Cusco, where he found that a huge number of women are bringing up their families single-handedly and with very little money, because either their husbands have left them, or have a problem with alcohol (both huge here due to the extreme poverty that so many Peruvians are living in.) This means that over 50% of the children work on the streets to earn the money for their food. John learned that the mothers who were working as Spanish teachers in the big language schools here are paid very poorly, whilst the tourists who come here to learn Spanish pay a lot of money for this privilege. He set up the NGO called Fair Play Language School with the help of one of the local language teachers (who has since become his wife). The teachers have all undergone a rigorous 7 month training teaching program, at no cost to themselves. The student pays a reasonable amount into the School Fund and a fair hourly rate in US$ directly to their teachers, plus travel costs if the teachers come to the student. Because the other schools have been able to dictate terms to the local teachers for so long, the word is that they are most unhappy with John. And from the plans he has in the pipeline to improve and increase the diversity of Fair Play, they are likely to continue to be so!
I volunteered daily for two weeks from 3 to 7pm at a small orphanage called Aldea Yannapay whilst waiting to start teaching their English class. For me, it was a real culture shock. The orphanage is in one of the poorest parts of Cusco and there certainly aren’t any tourists in these streets! This is a place for the street kids who have no family or home to go to, or who come from dysfunctional families where there’s no money and/or the father is an alcoholic. The organization also runs a small café/restaurant, cheerfully furnished with artfully arranged donated odds and ends, which is also staffed by volunteers (the food is great) and all the proceeds go to fund the orphanage. Their aim is not to hand out charity, but to lovingly educate and train the children so that they can become self-sufficient, able to earn their own living and take pride in their achievements.
We played games with the children, did handicrafts with them, read stories to them (in Spanish of course), helped them with their homework and catered to the endless demand for hugs and kisses. I never think of myself as creative, but found myself making colourful macramé bracelets for the little ones (and no sooner do I finish one bracelet and hand it over, then there is another little one wanting one too.) The ‘school’ is so far below what we understand in Australia to be the poverty line, you would have to see it to believe it. The only thing that is in plentiful supply there is love.
There are a few really good Vegetarian cafes here and I tend to eat in them a lot because I’m certainly not going to try Cuye (guinea pig) which is the traditional meat here, followed by llama.(The memories of small guinea pigs running squealing around the house after they had escaped their cages has put me right off that idea). And the sight of the meat stalls in the huge San Pedro market has just about turned me into a temporary vegetarian.
There are hundreds of Peruvian jewellery and clothing stands in the street and the more up-market stores. Their silver jewellery is strikingly different and intricately crafted, with a lot of the beautifully coloured natural stones and enamel incorporated into the designs. However the price is a deterrent and I think I will wait till I visit the big local markets outside of Cusco before I buy anything.
Tonight, we are going to the movies (there are no cinemas here in Cuzco, but a lot of the bars have a huge screen and a selection of movies showing. No admittance is charged, but you are expected to buy something to eat or drink.
Tomorrow is full on!!! My Spanish lessons in the morning, a nice lunch with the girls, a Yoga lesson from 5 to 6, dinner somewhere (one has to eat with all the running around) and then they are going on to a nightclub after and want me to go with them, but I rather think I’ll be worn out and shall thankfully go home to my nice warm bed.
The Cusquenians are absolutely mad about Salsa - all the younger ones go to Salsa classes in the bars in the evenings and almost every radio station plays Salsa music non stop. The girls from here go salsa dancing 3 or 4 times weekly and always ask me along too. I did go once to one of the many small night clubs here, but for me there were too many people, the noise level was through the roof, the strobe lights made me feel like a drunken sailor and the level of cigarette smoke gave me a sore throat. And if that doesn’t give an indication that I am officially ‘Over The Hill’, nothing else will. Only the music is as good as it always was, which decided me to have a weekly private lesson, as I did at home. There are some really good Salsa teachers around town and instead of paying AU$50 per hour lesson, here I only pay the equivalent of AU$10. I had my first one on Wednesday night and felt so good, that I floated home afterwards. There’s just something so irresistible about the Salsa music and dance steps!
On Friday night, I was invited to a baby shower. The proud parents-to-be (John and Fanny) are the founders of the Fair Play Language School whom I have my lessons with. It was a really good night and there were a few ‘firsts’ for me. All the ‘Profesoras’ were there plus a few of their students and of course the mum-to-be’s family as well. It started at 5pm and lasted until 5am!
Poor John had to wear a very large baby’s bib all night and drink his tipple from a baby’s bottle, all of which he took with good humour. There were a lot of games played during the evening and everyone was enjoying themselves so much it’s probably why the night went on into the next day.
Because the expected baby has now become two, there were two dolls, a boy and a girl, although the doctor is not sure what the second one is going to be. They tied John and Fanny’s right and left arm together, which left them with one arm each, and gave them the two dolls with a pile of mixed up clothing. Now Fanny didn’t have any problem sorting out which clothing belonged to the boy and girl doll, but John wasn’t so experienced. So there was quite a bit of pulling and tugging and ineptitude and it took them 6 minutes to finally dress both dolls. Then everyone else there was paired up and the time it took them to dress both dolls was recorded. The winning pair who recorded the fastest time to dress the ‘twins’ and win the prize, were the two oldest people there - my partner and I!! Not bad, especially since I had told them all that I had forgotten how to dress babies because it was so long ago! Must have been the rum which oiled the memory wheels!
I left at 11pm a little bit the worse for wear, because they kept passing around the coke and rum (actually I think it was more rum and less coke) throughout the night. My Spanish teacher wanted to walk me home because she felt it was a bit dicey for me to be walking in the streets alone at that time of night, but I decided that there were plenty of people still in the streets and made it back under my own (slightly wavering) steam.
I went to the orphanage on Monday and there was still no English class organized. Apparently (in true Peruvian fashion), the classroom which was to have been used, was now being used for the extra kids to do their homework in. When I asked Yuri when there might be a classroom available, he said they hoped it would be available some time in April or May. I said that he had plenty of very good volunteers to help the kids with their homework and play games and that I needed to be where I could be the most use and would like to find teaching classes elsewhere, so we parted amicably. I came home feeling a little deflated and the girls and I talked about it over dinner. The next day they each came home with a different volunteer teaching job for me within their organizations! So yesterday, I went to Hilda’s Language School to meet her ‘professor’ who has two projects he wants me to help with. One is a new class he is starting, working with the children who have had no access to any education and are almost without any written skills. He intends the class to be below the normal primary school entry level (probably Literacy level) and asked me if I would help him put together a curriculum and then teach it to the class. I said ‘yes’ to helping him with the curriculum (although truthfully I think it may be a littlebeyond my level of knowledge), and ‘no’ to teaching the classes - the reason being that these kids all come from extremely dysfunctional families and some don’t have any family at all. They either cling to the volunteers and don’t want to let them go, or are withdrawn and don’t want to join in. They desperately want some kind of stability in their lives and since the class won’t start for two weeks, I would only be their teacher for a further two weeks and then have to leave. He then asked me if I would take his English in hand and give him lessons. He’s had 5 years of grammar at University when studying for his teacher’s degree, but can’t speak English. Does that ring a bell?
Another is with two Peruvians who are working as volunteers at an organization names Pasa la Voz, whose main thrust is to help the street children here and to raise funds for their education, etc. These people need to be able to speak English in order to reach into the international community and work with tourists to raise awareness of the plight of the children here. So they come to my B and B three times a week for English conversational lessons and we are working on translating an explanatory speech which they will be giving to the visitors who come to the centre.
The third opportunity is with a local school named Inka Educa which always needs English teachers to teach the teenagers and adults here who need to be able to find work to support themselves. They also have Computer classes and Cooking classes to extend the range of career opportunities. I have sat in on Basic, Intermediate and Advanced classes to get an idea of where the students are at, and commence twice weekly classes this week from 8am to 12.30pm, Wednesdays and Fridays.
I am really looking forward to this, because it will remind me of the classes which I volunteer teach at the Edmund Rice Centre, where I am fortunate to be working with other dedicated people and volunteers who work with members of the refugee community.
That is when I'm not fulfilling my dream to travel to Spain and South America that is!
So now the girls are calling me because they are having a pancake night and they are apparently ready to eat. Since I have the honey in my cupboard, that won’t be too much of a problem. And all's well with me in my little eerie up here in the heights of Cusco.
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Jasmine
non-member comment
Fair Play language school
I am trying to find contact info for Fair Play Language School. Your mention of it was the only thing I could find on the internet. Do you by any chance have contact info for them? I've enjoyed reading some of your entries. I am 50 something and just starting out traveling myself. Thanks