After a late lunch with David's family, it was decided for us that we would be staying at their house in Huaycan, which was fine with us, and that David's half brother, Jesus, would go with us to the hostel to pick up our backpacks and check out of the hostel. We were soon on our way in a taxi which, by the way, cost us about half what it would have cost had we rented it. We once again had a tour of Lima from the window of our cab, got to the hostel, checked out, and were quickly on our way back. We got back to Huaycan before dinner, were shown the room where we would stay, we are pretty David's dad and Mama moved out of the room to give it to us, but there was no fighting that, so we accepted it and settled in. The house was pretty simple, as you entered the front door you came into a sitting room/dining room area, behind that was the stairs to go upstairs and a corridor that led to a bathroom, a small bedroom and the kitchen area. In the sitting room/dining area the walls were finished and painted and it was furnished with a large couch and a large dining table and chairs, the table sits at least 10. The back sleeping room was furnished and the kitchen area had a stove and refrigerator, but was not like a typical western kitchen. Upstairs there were three finished bedrooms, including ours, a small common area and two rooms that were still being finished. Of the three bedrooms, one was ours, one was used by a couple, the husband of which was one of Mama's sons, Richard, from a previous marriage and a room in which Jesus and Mama and Papa's son Raul slept. The steps went up another flight to the mostly open roof, which served as the laundry, a common area and,in a roofed over part, a room for Uncle Felix. It took us a while to find out exactly who everyone was, and every now and then, we still aren't sure we have it right, So here they all are: Mama and Papa: Victor and Dionescia. Their children: Raul (16), Monica (14) and Jeremy (a girl) (12). Mama's two children from a previous marriage who live there: Jesus (25) and Richard (?) with his wife. And Uncle Felix, our guess to his age is somewhere in his 60's.
Just the information above, when the commonality of language is small is hard to get, and to be sure it is correct. So, everything we learned was very slow going, that is until, late on our second day there, we learned that Richard had wifi and it was ok for us to use it. We got the password from Jesus and now we could use Google Translate as well as check email.
In thinking about how to tell the story of our time in Huaycan I decided not to do it chronologically, because that would take away from both the intensity of the learning we, especially David, were doing and the fact that there were few activities that were significant. Mostly, we hung out with whoever was around, asked questions, were asked questions and all of us tried our best to answer what we thought the questions were. There was always talk around the table, there was especially always talk when Raul was there, he has this insatiable curiosity that wont stop. If we weren't talking at meals we were talking on the rooftop while doing laundry, or sitting on the couch in the living room, or one or two or three would come into the room to talk. The whole thing got a lot easier when we discovered we had access to the internet. Using translation programs or online translators made it easier but it still was tough in some situations, where we were not sure what they were asking or they didn't understand our answers because that lacked knowledge of US social customs. The growth in all of our knowledge was slow and incremental but it did happen, slowly we began to understand at least the outer level of each other. Sandwiched between all this were activities, like the day Monica and Jeremy took us for a walk around town, including a local animal park, and the central market, which was fascinating for me and really a new experience for David. Or, the day I was doing my laundry on the roof when David, Mama and several others came up and we got to talking about the Guinea Pigs, a local delicacy, that they were raising on the roof. We also talked about Huaycan, which had been described to us as a slum but which they described, and I observed to be, a sometimes dangerous but generally safe community transitioning slowly from poverty to lower middle class. It climbs hills so steep that you wouldn't believe they could be built on and parts of the area seem to blend into the dunn colored landscape, except for a few brightly painted buildings.
All along one of David's hopes was to visit the place of his birth which is in a village in the hills above the town of Andahuaylas, a Andean town at almost 10,000 feet. This was one of the first things he mentioned when he met his family in Huaycan and they immediately agreed that it was a good idea, so planning began quickly, mostly arranging for Victor to take some time off from work. By Sunday it had been decided that we would leave late Monday afternoon on a bus from Lima, a trip that turned out to be 14 hours. So during the day on Sunday we rode a minibus to the cross country bus station to get our tickets, they needed to see our passports to sell us the tickets. That evening there was a spirited hour long family soccer game at a pitch across the street with nearly everyone in the family participating. David family and he had moved a long way toward each other since we knocked on the door three days before. Though the time was short the intensity was amazing - both David and I agreed that it seemed more like a week or two had gone by since we arrived.
The next morning was more talking, packing (the trip was planned to last three or four days) and then goodby's to the family members who weren't coming along. It was only Victor and Mama, David and I who were going. The rest had to stay behind because of school, jobs or just to take care of the house.
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