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August 11 Leaving Lima... Wednesday was my last day in Lima. I didn't think packing would take that long, since I only had what I had brought to Peru two months ago and a few purchases to take to friends in the States. So I went to Ely's shop in Surquillo. Her card says her shop opens at 9, so I got there at 9. At 9:45, I gave her a call... "Hey, Ely! Where are you?" "Oh, the shop doesn't open til 10," she said. "I'll see you soon." At 10:15, her employee finally came and opened up. Despite all the waiting outside in front of the peluqueria, the end result was worth it. For the first time since arriving in Lima, my hair didn't frizz when it had dried from its final treatment. (Lima's ultra-humid climate is very unflattering for my natural hair type.) And my French manicure and pedicure for S/. 25 couldn't do anything except make me smile. I love telling my friends I got a professional mani-pedi for $8.  After that, I went to Plaza Vea and got the last few items on my Peru shopping list (lucuma yogurt, fresh cheese, a bunch of Princesa chocolate bars), and then I went home and packed. Happily, my suitcases weighed the proper amounts, and everything fit in place quite well. I still had several hours before I needed to head to Jorge Chavez International, so I sat on my bed and showed Renzo, Diego, and Gabi the photos on my camera. However, Renzo kept squirming over my laptop as he tried to find the perfect angle from which to view my pictures. "Renzito," I said. "Please don't sit on my computer." He squirmed off, but soon he had squirmed back on top of it again. "Renzo, please don't sit on my computer." I moved his little, four-year-old body a foot to the right of my laptop. But five seconds later, he was back right where he had been before. "Renzo, get off my bed, please. I can't have you sitting on my computer." "No," he said, wiggling until he was in a more comfortable position. I picked him up and set him on the ground. He began screaming and scrambled back onto the bed. I pulled him off. "You can see my pictures from the floor. Gabi will hold the camera so you can still see them," I said. "No! NO! NOO!!" By now, he was furious, and Gabi (the maid) had to hold him with both hands to keep him from climbing back on the bed. He began to pound her with his fists. "Renzo, you do not ever, ever hit a woman." I looked straight into his eyes. "A man never hits a woman." Of course, he was four, and he was angry and in the middle of a tantrum, and so he paid absolutely no attention. Gabi had to forcibly carry him out of my room and upstairs, where he continued to scream for a half hour. "Wow." Diego kept flicking through my photos calmly. "I like this one of the zebras. Is this the Parque de las Leyendas or Huachipa?" I sighed. Kelsey sure is right: living with a family not your own teaches you exactly how you want to raise your own kids (and exactly how you don't want to raise them!). Soon enough, it was time to head to the airport, and Gabi and Kelsey walked me to the corner so I could catch a taxi. I bade them farewell, and I headed out to Callao and the plane that would take me back to my home country. The taxi didn't take me the usual route: down Javier Prado to La Marina, right at Buenos Aires and then straight up Faucett to the airport. He took me down innumerable backroads and side streets; we passed couples in the middle of evening strolls, their faces angled in conversation, and I wondered if the man and woman were husband and wife, or brother and sister, or father and daughter. In the crowded custer towering by our side at the light, I wondered if all the commuters pressed together in standing-room-only intimacy knew each other, or if they were all traveling to distinct homes with separate lives and separate families, never to cross paths again. The cool, evening air kissed my face. We passed the Parque de las Leyendas and the bread store where the Morales family and I had once bought pan huachana (bread made in the style of their hometown), and we passed through the floribundia-lined residential streets of San Miguel, then the rougher parts of the Cercado and Carmen de la Legua. Who would be meeting in that hostel tonight, never to meet again? Who would be eating with his family in that chifa or that polleria, surrounded by his loving, laughing wife and children? So many happy lives, so many sad lives, so many lives that have an empty hole in their middle, waiting for Him to come and fill it. The airport check-in line brought harsh, flourescent-and-sterile-antiseptic realism back to my end-of-trip reverie. Still, there was plenty of people-watching to be done. Especially interesting was the Italian priest decked out in white behind me and the homeward-bound Mormon missionary in front of me. The Vatican and Utah. That's where they told their neighbors in the line where they were going. And I was headed to Michigan... I was happy to board my plane. The cheese tortellini and movie at midnight seemed a bit misplaced, but it was still a good flight. I arrived in the US at 6am Thursday, Peruvian Time, though it was already 7am EDT. I was a bit shell-shocked in MIA, where I was not the tallest individual, and where I saw gaggles of sunburnt, heavyset tourists on their way back to Ohio and Wisconsin and Missouri from Grand Cayman, the Bahamas, and the Turks and Caicos. I settled into a comfortable seat near my gate to wait out my 6-hour-long layover. Only one twenty-something was within 30 feet of me, and he was chattering away on a cell phone in the corner. I would be undisturbed. The word "pecado" ("sin"), a drifter from his conversation, interrupted my devotions. That was a Christian word, and I instinctively turned around to glance at him but caught myself soon enough. It isn't polite to listen in on other people's phone calls. However, five minutes later, he came up behind me. "Excuse me," he said. "Were you in Peru on a missions trip?" He pointed to my blue t-shirt, which said, "Peru 2009 - Jesus" on it. "Yes, I interpreted for a team in San Juan de Lurigancho this past June," I replied, "and since then, I've been doing my Masters research in various parts of Lima." "San Juan de Lurigancho? That's where my dad used to pastor! I'm Peruvian, though I study here in the States." He sat down in the row of seats behind me. "What church did your dad pastor at?" I had to ask. I about fell over when he said, "The Christian Missionary Alliance Church." The coincidence was just too strong--even crazier when he told me that he had not just come from Peru on the same flight as me; he was in Miami visiting relatives, but he was getting ready to fly back to Oklahoma, where his small, Christian university is. For the next two hours, we talked about everything--life on a Christian campus, the Parque de las Leyendas, the joys and pains of translating for short-term missionaries, the yummiful-ness which is paneton Donofrio. Shared friends like Laura and Vico. We freely floated between Spanish and English, and just hearing that Peruvian way of saying things made everything better for a few minutes there in the Cuban- and Caribbean-dominated Miami International Airport. Soon, however, he had to leave to board his flight, and it was only at this point that we mentioned our names. It's funny how a conversation can go on for hours without the disclosure of names, but that is how things go, sometimes... Happy that my layover was already half-over, I moseyed over to my gate and spent the rest of the wait watching CNN and the Detroit-bound extended family in front of me. The grandfather was making his five-year-old grandson guess which hand the candy he had bought him was in, and the grandson was doubled over with delighted laughter. "Now, the magic don't work if you be laughin'," the grandfather said with a serious face and a twinkle in his eye. "Which had got the candy in it?" "That one." The boy pulled on the grandpa's huge, right hand with both of his little ones. Grandpa opened it--empty. "THAT one!" He wrapped his arms around his grandpa's left hand and pulled up his legs from the floor, dangling for a few seconds. "Yeah." The grandpa set the boy back down on the ground and opened his palm to reveal a Laffy-Taffy. I smiled and sighed. It was a good day in the world. I couldn't stay awake on my flight, though--I dozed and woke again about five times before we even took off. I was amazingly tired by the time I met up with Mom and John in DTW, and I was more than happy to arrive back in my own town and my own bed (though I didn't actually get to turn in til after dinner--much of which I couldn't eat because of my delicate stomach--and til after I had showed John all my Peruvian purchases.). It had been a good trip home. Now, I had a week of Michigan before grad school began once more... TrackbacksThe trackback URL for this entry is: http://mariposadejesus2.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!7337EFAFA9BA19F3!4388.trak Weblogs that reference this entry
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