Arequipa

I miss my guitar with the passion of a thousand suns. The impact of music cannot be underestimated considering the mark it makes on our lives every time we pick up an instrument to play. When you hold a guitar or a flute or whatever day after day after day, your hands learn where to go, what to do, how to coax that special sound out of an otherwise inanimate object. My guitar is one of my best friends--I know its ins and outs, its strengths and weaknesses, its voice. A slab of wood with strings cannot produce music, it can only provide an easier way for two hansd ana soul to speak through it.

We are in Arequipa now, sitting at sunset on the Plaza de Armas as twilight transforms the white marble city into a gilded masterpiece of streetlamps and red-tinged light on the horizon. The Arequipeños mill about the Plaza, and every seat of every bench is taken. The city is drenched in a sense of calm, sensible history and pride--there is none of the rushing about of Lima or the frantic hustling of tourists we found so aggravating in Cusco. There is simply a sense of friendly cohabitation with everyone who calls the city home.

Although it is only a few minutes away by bus, the world of San Isidro and Intiwawa (the former is a town outisde Arequipa, the latter the organization with whom we are doing volunteer work to help educate women and children about their rights and end the endemic domestic violence that occurs in San Isidro) is so different and so separate from that of Arequipa. In Arequipa, we are the children, learning and being taken care of by our parents at the hostel and all around town as we inevitably make mistakes in judgment, the language, or simply get sick and need to be taken care of. We stand out as being more helpless than perhaps even the niños peruanos, and the city comes to our aid. At Intiwawa, the roles are entirely different. We, along with 20 other gringos and a smattering of peruanos are repsonsible for over 50 children over the course of 5 hours every morning. They listen to us as we instruct them to behave properly and think in specific ways. We must have all the answers, and even when we do not, we must appear as if we do lest we lose their respect. We teach them English despite their higher skill in Spanish and we require that they brush their teeth as we arrive, frequently with hangovers or without having washed ourselves.

I don't mean to imply that we aren't doing anything to help, only that the description of volunteer work sends the message that help, transferrence of knowledge, betterment of life, etc., only exist on a one-way street. These children teach us more in every moment we share than perhaps we can ever impart on them, and for this I am sad that we only have more or less another week with them.

I find myself worrying frequently about the lack of epiphanies or profound learning experiences that I have had on this journey thus far. I get depressed when I realize how few experiences have hit me just so such that I change my perspective and point my life in a different direction altogether. I waste time and anxiety worrying about these things and yet in the last few paragraphs I have described three very profound realizations that occurred to me only today.

I think perhaps we look in the wrong places for change to enter our lives, and sometimes simply by looking we blind ourselves to the change occuring around us. We live in such a dynamic world and we inhabit such dynamic bodies and souls that it would be a mistake to assume that just because we don't notice the change that none has actually ocurred. Truly, change is the only constant force in the universe: love, life, pain, joy, white sillar marble, all these will fade, increase or decrease with intensity or clarity or desirability. The only thing you can be sure of is that from this moment to the next, in the infinite matrix of information that is our universe, everything will change eventually.

Now. I think I'll go buy a guitar.