From New York I came straight to Cuzco, Peru where I am staying for 6 weeks. It's a change to have a daily routine, a different way of travelling and I am loving it. Every morning I teach English for a couple of hours at a boys orphanage. It's a much nicer place than other places I've heard of in Cuzco (the others sound very Charles Dickens, being overcrowded and the only food being gruel served twice a day). The place I'm at is more Lord of the Flies than Charles Dickens - despite the number of teachers and other resources the kids are left to do as they please a lot of the time.
I was surprised to learn a lot of the boys have parents who are unable are unwilling to look after them. The stories are sad. To me the most moving has been a boy named Alberto who arrived at the orphanage the week before I did, he looks about 4/5 but they think that malnutrition has made him small for his age. Apparently his parents had drug problems and gave him drugs because it was cheaper than food and kept him quiet. He was so scared when he first arrived that he would stay in a corner and not look at anyone. After only a week you would catch him looking at people (but looking away if they looked at him).
Tuesday was the first time Alberto came to an English lesson and by now he would look me in the eye and say a few words. A couple of the smaller boys who probably didn´t have anyone to pick on before, were throwing pens at Alberto´s face. I kicked one of them out and he would run back into the room and hit Alberto and run out again - he was obviously used to getting away with anything as long as I was not physically between the door and Alberto. It seems the people running the orphanage don´t mind too much, except for one local psychology graduate who is employed as an intern and singlehandedly tries to do everything.
Alberto has not been taught to write yet, but was very happy to try to copy his own name and the numbers 1 to 10. He stayed until the end of the lesson and was so happy by the end that he skipped out of the room - all it took was a couple of hi 5s and letting him draw pictures on the white board.
At lunch time I have a 2 hour Spanish lesson, which is very cheap here. It took a week for my Spanish to be better than my French ever was in three years of high school classes. I´m very happy to finally be picking up a language - I felt so silly in Europe because not many people speak less than three languages, let alone only one!
In the afternoon I catch a bus to and from a library in the suburbs. The buses are strangely fun - partly because of the energetic music they play (I think it is known as "Hyper-Peruvian-folk/pop", at least I think it should be). Partly because other tourists don´t catch them. And largely because there is a conductor on each bus who energetically shouts the names of the destinations out the window, calls the name of the next stop to the passengers, tells the driver when to stop, keeps track of who has and hasn´t paid and frequently sprints after the bus when he gets left behind to jump onto the moving bus - all at the same time.
The library is in a poorish area where dogs are always fighting in the street, where there are storm water drains next to the main road and in the middle of the side streets. I saw a taxi drop a wheel into one of them, it took 6 people to get it out and one of them came within inches of having his foot run over. I think I tripped over one of the drains one day - I don´t remember tripping or falling or landing but I had been walking beside a drain on the main road (almost a metre wide and two metres deep). I found myself lying facedown on the other side - considering my hands were still in my pockets I was very glad to have not hurt myself (the next day I had a sore shoulder and sore neck (can you get concussion from straining your neck without having a bump on you head??)).
Anyway, in the library kids from the area come to read and play games. For the first hour I listen to kids reading - which is great Spanish practice. Then I run the games room which is very fun and also lets me practice some Spanish. I figure if I am having fun the kids will too, so I have rationalised picking games that I like. Last week it was mainly Hang man and Memory.
For lunch and dinner I eat out so I have got to have some favourite spots. The best value is a four course meal with a frappe for $4.50. Often I splurge for an $8 main. And also, the bus trips are $0.30 here for any distance - I´m not sure how that pays for 2 employees as well as fuel. On the weekends I sleep a lot - sleeping off colds from the kids and coping with the altitude. Hopefully I will do more sightseeing over then next couple of weekends.
