Many articles have recently been published on the plague of being busy, on our self inflicted and horrific schedules, on the self worth people find in the implicit importance of always having too much to do. This is blamed on the rise of internet-caused narcissim, on the loss of religion and the associated meaning it gives to life, on the rise of the individual’s need to be unique and important. We’re told to slow down, learn to relax, find space in silence, all by experts who are, themselves, busy speakers, writers, physicians, analysts and bloggers, looking to bump their own social networking profiles and wrapped in their own cult of importance that comes from never having time. After all, if your time is scarce, that must mean that it is valuable and precious.

I spent a week in Joras, sitting on a bench that was built of mud and a part of the foundation of the house. There were no other chairs. I sat there, under the eaves on the front porch, and watched as life passed in front of the hedge flanked garden gate. People would wander by, herding children or stopping to gossip with my host mother. One of the two trucks that connect the village to the outside world might slosh past, wheels spinning and chased by boys giggling as the drivers throttled the engines and coaxed the four wheel beasts through sticky mud. Often though, there would be nothing. A hen might carefully pick its way past, going to locations unknown both to me and the chicken. A pig, its Y-stick carefully tied into place, would wander along the road, appearing around the edge of one bush and disappearing behind the next, and I would sit there, perhaps with a cup of hugely sweetened tea, perhaps not. I sat and watched and thought. I didn’t think of anything in particular. I was not meditating or trying to have epiphanies. I was just sitting. It takes some practice to just sit, and of practice, I need a lot.

19 March 13

Por Ayabaca

The bus winds up a well maintained dirt road, barely clearing soil outcroppings and skirting a long, tumbling fall of hill on our right. Every time we hit a bump, I land into my seat and a little poof of urine-scented air escapes the cushions. I spend five and half hours debating ‘would I rather be in this extremely comfortable seat that smells overwhelmingly like pee, or on a clean but uncomfortable wooden bench?’ Every time I think I’ve settled on the comfortable recliner, we hit another puddle, the stench assails me again, and the thought of a numb tailbone sounds better and better. We keep climbing higher, the bus stalling when our driver shifts gears as the vehicle crawls into la sierra. The views are strangely familiar – rice paddies terraced into the mountains, the small white houses clinging to places barely flatter than a ski hill, corn growing in fairly straight rows. A few banana trees are scattered here and there, but I can’t find any elephantine taro leaves. We pass a vulture. He and I are on eye level because his tree roots somewhere down the cliff, so his perch barely clears the road’s altitude. A brown river rushes by, carving the valley ever deeper. There’s a proper bridge crossing the chasm, but next to it is a small zipline with a one person pulley attached. It looks equal parts fun and terrifying. We cut through a village; eight houses clustered on both sides of the road, and guanabana and popcorn are sold to los pasejeros through the open bus windows. We start off again, zigzagging up a series of switchbacks. All I can think, when I’m not debating the comfortable urine seat v. the clean wooden bench, is ‘please, bus, don’t tip over.’ I spare a moment to think about what would happen if we flipped into the hill on our left instead of the empty space on our right. It’s patently obvious that the right wheels would barely leave earth if we leaned against the cliff, so steep is its ascent from the hard packed dirt of the road. The power line cuts a cleaner path up the gorge and we crisscross underneath it. The lowest line is covered in air plants, happily perched on the metal and soaking up the sun. Occasionally, we sidle past cows, horses, or burros hanging out on the side of the road. They hear the honk of the horn and scatter to the edge, ignoring the autobus careening by. Trees are silhouetted against the skyline and suddenly we’re inside a cloud. I revert to childhood whenever I’m in cloud, and, tickled pink, smile to myself. ‘I’m in a cloud’s belly!’ The mist grows thicker until I start praying that the bus driver can see better than I can, because to me it looks like the road ends five feet in front of us, and he’s flooring the gas. We cross the spine of the mountains and suddenly it starts raining. Welcome to Peru’s microclimates. The temperature drops from the mid nineties to the low sixties and I’m very glad I packed my chaqueta in my daypack. Suddenly, we’re headed down and I’m irrationally upset. ‘All that work going up and now we’re just going back down?’ But that’s it. We’re here, and I suddenly become self conscious. Do I smell like urine now?

This is a story about a cow. This cow tried very hard to keep me from going back to medical school.

You see, technically, there was internet access in Joras; it’s a 3G cell-based signal from an antenna on top of one of the nearby mountains. When something got in the way of a direct line-of-sight to the antenna, the internet (and cell service) didn’t work. Small children often got in the way, but I could ask them to move. The cow, on the other hand, which was halfway up the mountain? The cow didn’t move.

With the cow blocking the internet signal, I was in a bit of trouble. My school registration period changed, due to technical difficulties in New York and suddenly I was in the middle of the sierra with a cow-blocked internet signal and I needed to register for my fourth year medical school classes.

The first day, I caught a ride with the profesores back into Ayabaca, the provincial capitol, to use an internet cabin there. Of course, then my school’s website was down and an email told us they would notify us when registration became available again. Receiving said notification, however, would require internet.

Back we went to Joras, and the amazing disappearing internet signal. Two days later, the cow herd moved long enough for me to check my email and find out, “Surprise! You have to register for classes ASAP! Or you won’t get what you need and then you won’t graduate.”

5:00 am the next morning, I was catching a ride back into Ayabaca to try to register for classes again. And then, my personal profile doesn’t work on the school website. Often times, a profile problem takes several hours to fix, and I had about forty minutes. I emailed IT and said “Please help or a cow will block my internet again.” I can only imagine that they appreciated that comment, because magically my profile was fixed and I was able to register for classes.

When we got back to Joras, it started raining and then the internet started working. If anyone knows why rain makes the internet work, I am interested in hearing theories. Maybe the cows went inside?

But truly – I was late registering for med school because a cow blocked the internet. Beat that excuse.

One of the projects I’m working on here is a taenia solium surveillance project. Taenia solium is a parasite that can end up causing seizures in adults, so detecting and treating it, and more critically, researching it to find more effective medications, are important to countries where it is a serious health issue. (The US doesn’t have native T. solium.) I volunteered/was volunteered to help collect samples for this project, which means I went to a small, sierra village and helped process about a thousand stool samples.

Joras, the community in which we worked.

To get from Lima to Joras, the town I worked in, is a bit of a journey. Joras is in northern Peru, not far from Ecaudor, so the first step is a 16 hour bus ride up the Pan American Highway from Lima to Piura, which is the capitol city of the department of Piura. From Piura city, I caught another bus 5 hours to Ayabaca, which is the mountain capitol of the province in which Joras is located. From Ayabaca to Joras is another 45 minutes to an hour in a pick up truck – there are two trucks that make the trip to Joras every day, so if you miss one, you’re out of luck.

This is the cloud rainforest you pass through on the way from Ayabaca to Joras.

I had a fabulous time in Joras with the other biologists and the Peace Corp Volunteer with whom we worked. There was a lot of laughter, a lot of stool samples, a bonfire, and gallons of sweetened herbal tea.

Dulces de Ayabaca

There were a lot of good moments. Riding in the back of a truck in the sunshine, having a fresh lemonade, a cat falling asleep on my lap, the mud being so sticky it nearly pulled my shoe off, pineapple juice, learning how to make a traditional Peruvian potato sauce, staring at the rain for hours on end, discussing knitting with an old Peruvian woman, seeing a Peruvian Paso. I enjoyed my short adventure out of Lima.