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The tile to this peice was me pounding on the keyboard in frustration, anger, and all those other emotions somebody might feel living in a foreign land…

Imagine this if you will.

It is Friday, November 10, and it’s morning. Life starts about 5:45 every morning. I am normally woken up by the child that lives behind my room on the same property that I am calling home. From what I can figure this young child is going through the whole potty training business. And that is what the yelling and screaming is all about. It’s the equivalent to “Help me! I need wiping!”

At that point I get up and out of my lumpy bed and pick my sheets and blankets up off the floor, then make my way upstairs with my four months worth of uncut hair. I must some sort of African heritage because it is starting to look a lot like an afro, and join my host parents with breakfast, which is the same thing we had for dinner, pan, which is a bread roll and butter or pan with avocado and salt. How I miss bacon. And who can forget hash browns with some Crystal Hot Sauce? Oh Crystal Hot Sauce, how I miss thee…

Anyway, the morning’s conversation started with them explaining to me that they are going to be gone because they are going Lima to vote. Apparently, it is mandatory that everybody must vote in there registered place of residence or there is a huge fine if one does not vote. They ask me to join them to their house in Lima so that I am not in Huanta by myself while they are away in Lima . I don’t think this will be a problem because I haven’t done a damn thing in last two and a half months that I have been in Huanta anyway, and it is a good excuse to get out of Huanta for a bit, and any excuse to get away from Huanta is a good one, but I have to check with Ruth, the main lady in charge of me that lives in Lima. I will send her an email this morning when I go to the radio station to report for another day of nothingness.

Starting, about three weeks ago I was getting real desperate for something to do here in Huanta because I was really sick and needed to take my mind off the fact that I was sick, in Peru for a year, even worse in Huanta, a place that is completely off the map of anything except for the bus that travels through once a day depositing and picking up passengers as it makes its way on cliff side roads to other cities and towns among the Andes. I found myself in search of anything to do, anything to occupy my mind. So I gathered the five other people that ‘work’ at the station with me that come and go throughout the day, I had them all huddled around my laptop trying to explain that I was bored and needed something to do with the help of a internet based translation program. They all looked at me and said, Sorry, there really is nothing for us to do, let alone somebody who barely speaks Spanish, let alone that crazy more dominate language of these parts Quetwa.” So there I was, I came up short, but at lest I tried. Felling all my resources were exhausted I sent an email off to Ruth explaining that I was not feeling well and need something to do, I am going insane. Remember this was two and a half, three weeks ago.

On Wednesday of this week I got an email from Ruth saying that she had sent an email off to my boss here at the radio station explaining that I need something to do and she would like to have schedule of what my day’s layout is like, but never received a respond, so she was going to send another request that afternoon. This was Wednesday of last week.

Thursday, the second day of November, was my first day of actual work. As it turns out, I am to move about a thousand bricks from around the property of the radio station, up two flights of stairs to the rooftop. Ok, well I will do it, because I will do about anything, and it was better then sitting around doing nothing. So I spent about four hours making laps carrying five to six bricks at a time to the rooftop. I probably would have kept doing throughout the day, but it seemed as if everybody else just sat there and watched me sweating and carrying bricks up these stairs. Wait. They are just standing there with their arms crossed watching me carry these bricks. I watched them watch me for a couple dozen laps until I missed a step on the steps ascending to the roof top, as I and five or six bricks came crashing back down to earth. At that point I want home for lunch and did not return.

Friday, I was back to spending my day doing nothing. But I was asked to come in on Saturday, at a bright and early nine o clock.

Saturday, I waited around until nine thirty until my boss got there to unlock the door. I was handed an issue of the local newspaper and a bottle of some neon pink, toxic smelling cleaner of some sort. Clean the windows, all of them. Of course, I did. I found myself pondering the thought; why do I have good work ethics? Why am I here on a Saturday to clean windows? Did I come to Peru to wash windows, carry bricks, and be a waste of air and space?

Fast-forward to Wednesday of this last week.

I got a schedule of my daily duties. It goes down something like this. Six days a week I am cleaning and tiding up the radio station. Six days a week I am teaching English to school age kids. Oh I am so elated with joy, yippee! And I mean that sarcastically. And what is this? Thursday morning I am a free laborer. Great, just shoot me now. So much for working with radio, huh…

Here it was Thursday of this week, my day as a free laborer. I get to the radio station and was handed an empty five gallon bucket, a shovel and a broom and was told that my job for the day was to shovel all the sand on the rooftop and make on big pile out of it. Ok, I did that for a while, until I got a couple of blisters on my hands and then went home. I have had enough. I did not come to Peru to become a free laborer. If I wanted to do such work, I would have donated my time in Mississippi roofing houses and such of that nature.

Back to Friday the tenth were my story began. According to my daily schedule this is my day to report to some farm for daily duties there. But that didn’t happen. Nobody was at the radio station until well into the mid-morning. And not knowing where this farm was, I did not able to report there. In the afternoon I am suppose to return to the radio station to begin my English classes. Ok, well I have never taught English. As a matter of a fact, I don’t think I have ever even passed an English class in school. So with no books, no resources, no pens, no paper I am to teach a bunch of kids English. Teach children that I don’t even speak their language. Great. I really was not looking forward to this. I keep asking myself, at what point did I stop being able to make decisions for myself, especially the ones that decided what I was going to do with myself, and what I wanted to do.

I want on with my day. I sent that email off to Ruth to ask her if I could go with my host parents to Lima . I got a respond shortly there after saying it was ok, and went home for lunch. I told my host parents that I can join them with their trip to Lima . They were grateful to hear this. I spent my four hour lunch break doing what I normally do. Nothing. Sleeping. I eventually returned the Radio Amauta. I don’t know if I was late or if I was early, I have totally lost track of time. I no longer even carry a cell phone with me. I go a week with out even knowing what day it is. Everything has evolved into last nothingness.

When I came back to the station nobody was there, naturally. Do people exist here? No. Only me.
Sorry, you are looking for whom?
Sorry, I don’t know where they are.
When are they going to be back?
Sorry, I don’t know.
What do I here?
I ask myself that everyday.
Come back in two, maybe three hours.
Actually, make that four, maybe somebody will be here by then.

Thus, eventually my boss did come back. He came to me and said, “Well you are teaching English today, the kids will be here at four. Oh, and the whole going to Lima thing, your not going, I need you here to work.”
“Doing what?” I asked.
“Teach English,” he replied.

Right that whole teaching English to school kids.

“Right, how do you want me to do that again?”
“I don’t know, just talk to them.” he suggested.

So I did. I looked at him and started carrying on a conversation with myself directed at him about how frustrated I am, how I am going insane, I don’t want to teach English to school kids. I don’t know why he thinks I would like to teach school kids. How cleaning and doing crapy labor work to go home and do nothing but sit in church for the last five hours of my day, everyday, except for Sunday, when I have to look forward to go twice that day, is wearing me thin. But of course he didn’t understand me. I was talking in English, just as he suggested.

I waited around for these kids to come for their English class. They never came. I’m not sure if it was the heavy downpour of rain coming down that turned the streets into rivers and the sidewalks into streams, or they just didn’t want to go to another class after a week of school. But I was grateful for them not coming.

I went home to explain to my host parents that I no longer could go with them to Lima . They had a hard time understanding why this was. How can you be able to go earlier in the day and four hours later not be? I tried to explain that my boss wants me to stay here in Huanta because he needs me here.
“Por que,” they ask me.
I tried to explain that he wants me here to work.
“To work? You don’t do anything there anyway.”

Then I explained that he has a vision of me teaching all the town’s kids English. As a matter of a fact they were broadcasting over the airwaves as we were speaking that I was offering free English classes to anybody and everybody, even though I was never asked about it myself.

Great!

Soon there was a guy knocking at our front gate because he teaches English here in Huanta and that was his only source of income and that I cant do it for free.

Nice. Now I am in the middle of argument, and I don’t even want to teach English, especially not to school age children. He eventually left and I was standing there with my host parents, just as confused with the situation as I was. They looked at me and said, “You want to leave don’t you? Do you want to come with us to Lima ? Well we are to go talk to Peilagio(my boss)”
“You can’t,” I replied “There is no point. He says that I am needed here so Ruth is going to stand behind that. And even if he changes his mind and I do go with you Ruth will be mad at me because I am not here.”

This is yet another thing that is hard for them to comprehend. How is if I get the ok from my boss, that Ruth will be mad at me because of this.

Honestly, myself. I have enough of all of it. Waking up in the morning going to a radio station were there is nobody there sixty percent of the day, explaining that I have no idea were they are and when to expect them to return, if ever. At a station that the only non-prerecorded program is totally in Quetcwa, I don’t even understand it, let alone the music. If that is considered music I would rather be deft. How am I supposed to help with that? Spending eighty present of my day not knowing what the hell is going on.

But one thing has come out of this. My host parents, there was a time when they damned me to hell. Now I think we might be ok, even if I have been damned.