Beaches, Bones and Hare Hare

All right, here I am in the glorious country of Peru. There is culture here! There are little tiny women wearing alpaca and socks with sandals and top hats. I love it. It is also a third world country, and the thing is that this is one of the fancier ones, you know? Lots of huts made out of reeds and no foundation, so they´re falling over and grocery stores are like the Quik-E Mart because you buy all of your meat and vegetables from the farmers´markets on the streets. I´ve tried bananas and oranges so far. Katie bought a large avocado today, I´ll let you know how it goes. It´s also a bit colder than we expected here and it´s moist all the time so I immediately got a sinus infection. I had to go to the botica where another American volunteer talked to the ¨pharmacist¨about what antibiotic I should take. She prescribed something and was talking to me about how to take it...she pointed at her mouth, shook her head no, and then pointed at her butt. I looked at her and said, ¿QUE?¨ And she did it again. Luckily, they understood by the look on my face that I thought it meant not in the mouth, in the butt, and corrected the gestures. I really need to learn Spanish. REALLY good thing I cleared that up before we left.



Now about the Farm!: So, you know when you have this fantastic concept about going and working on a yoga farm? Sure you do. Well, sometimes things come up as surprises that you were not quite expecting along the way. Of course this isn´t shocking, I did read that the farm was a Hare Krishna mission of sorts, but I did not quite know all that this entailed and it seemed a minor detail at the time. Well, just our luck, in case we had no idea what Hare Krishna was before, we were to be educated fast because we arrived to the Eco Truly Village in the middle of their 25th anniversary festival. Let me explain what this entailed: 500 people from all over South America that came to the Eco Village for 5 days of singing very loudly, playing drums at any given moment and oh they just LOVED to go on until 1 a.m. and start up again at 4 a.m. Oh, did I mention we slept in a tent so we could hear all the joyful singing and drumming at any time? Ah, well you know, we could just feel the love more that way. I already know several chants. I´m pretty good at them. Oh, and there are cold showers and the sun doesn´t shine here much. Now, sarcasm aside, there is an ashram here which is neat and peaceful. We danced in it the first night we were here and got a feel for the excitement and energy and we got to see the ceremonies right away. There was a wedding and induction ceremony for someone (like a Hare Krishna baptism) on another day where they decorated the courtyard with a giant mud-flower yantra that they burned fruit on in the middle of. There were Hare Krishna bands that played every night. Like Christian rock, but Hare Krishna instead. The gurus who founded the place were here, one is German and he loved my name; basically asked why my parents would name me after such a crazy goddess. I told him it fit. He has intense eyes and stares into your soul a lot. This can be disconcerting, but I think I stared back fairly well.



Yesterday was the first day without the festival, so we got to watch everyone pack up and ship out. Druva, the coordinator, led us on a bonafide tour of the place which turned into a large explanation of all of the iconography featured throughout. The trulys are these cone shaped buildings that are earthquake resistent and feature lots of Krishna and avatar images along with scenes from the Bhagavad Gita and he led us through what they were. Yet each time he introduced a new scene or icon, we turned it into a philosophical conversation about the religion and the practices. After three hours of this, I realized my head was about to explode. I will say that I understand most of the principles of the foundation of their religion and it really matches those of Christianity and Buddhism. I love to learn. We participated in their meditation session last night where they chant (I played tambourine during this) and read a passage from the Bhagavad Gita. They did one in English yesterday about serving others as the road to being happy and ridding yourself of material possessions, much like Zen.

Alas, we may not stay the month we expected because the urgency for volunteers is not there as much as I think they appreciate the devotional side, which we just cannot offer them. I do enjoy the beach, but it is very dirty. It also happens to have burial mounds on it FILLED with protruding human bones. I have seen a human skull, femurs, humeruses, tailbones, ribs...Yep. JUUUUST great. They explained that they had to dig up a nearby cemetary because they wanted to build something else there, so they just plopped the bodies there on the beach and that some are 400 years old or so... We saw some kids poking the skull with a stick. Katie said that´s bad joojoo. I agree.

All right, well I will let you all know how this continues to go. We will stay for the rest of the week and find out more about the volunteering as we get further into it. I miss you all, and I hope you are doing well. The nearest town is 20 minutes away and the computers are a bit old, so I will post pictures and video as soon as possible.