I took a walk yesterday, crossing the same streets and passing the same sights I´ve seen since September. I walked around my neighborhood, Paucarbambilla. I crossed the new St. Sabastien bridge. And I followed the cracked sidewalk along the Huallaga River.I left the house at about 3pm, when most of the tiendas and storefronts are closed up for the afternoon siesta. And while the streets were sleepy and vacant, I could hear the familiar droning melody of a funeral march. Heavy drums and out-of-tune brass instruments followed a slowly moving mass of sixty or seventy people, toward the giant Catholic church. If I´m closer to the procession I usually stop and wait until the last snare drum passes, transfixed by the somber crowd. But today I continued along the river.
Sometimes merky tan and other times a cross between caramel and liquid chocolate, the river changes depending on the rain and sediments it carries. Everyday when I walk to work, it seems to contain something different.
I take this same route day after day, in the morning to the office and back home for lunch, returning in the afternoon and then home again at dusk. Each way gives me twenty minutes of solitude and a string of unassociated thoughts.
This afternoon I walked along as usual, but paid special attention to what was around me, identifying what I may or may not see again once I leave.
The sidewalk is lined with shady trees, each covered with a chalky white paint about waist high, to keep away termites. Every couple of months, a team of women from the el campo (countryside), come in for a day of work. Barefoot or in flip flops, they shlap on the paint with flimsy brushes. They´ll probably eat well that week with the extra income. But I wonder how long that will last.
I peaked over the cement retaining wall, watching the river flowing forward on its way to the Amazon. But my eyes were taken away from the water by a mound of rotting trash, dumped along the river bank and carelessly left behind. Beer cans, broken dishes, empty boxes, and shredded paper. No one trying to hide it.
"Save the Planet" campaigns have only recently begun in Peru and are slowly making their way into school classrooms. In fact, just after stepping foot outside the house, I passed perfect evidence that local kids are taking notice. In a small park, a blue construction paper sign was tacked to a tree, and in orange cut-out letters read "Cuidame" (take care of me). There was a little red paper butterfly glued to the top corner.
I left the shady walkway along the river and headed toward Jr. 2 de Mayo (May 2nd Street), which commemorates a battle for independance between Peru and Spain. As usual, I kept my glance low along the ground making sure not to trip into one of the many open holes in the cement sidewalk. I´m not sure of their purpose, other than a possible water drainage system, and most are half covered by a large rock or filled with trash.
When I take the risk of looking up, I am constantly met with a panorama of sandy colored mountains, which rise above and behind the cement block houses lining the streets.
I pass familiar front doors with decorative metalwork on the windows and bright colored outer walls - turquoise, orange and green. The small produce market I usually visit was closed for the afternoon, with a rusty aluminum panel pulled across the entrance.
Most buildings have small window balconies with delapitated wooden railings on the second floor. Mariachi singers still visit homes to sing love songs on a birthday or anniversary, but nobody hangs their arms over the creaking balconies anymore.
Along the streets are a web of electric lines, tangled with red and pink flowering vines, connected every which way through windows and improvised third floors. Every building has a cluster of iron poles sticking up and out of the four corners of the roof, in the event that another floor be added in the future. Each metal rod is covered by an empty plastic bottle, so as not to attract lightening.
This isn´t the only practical use of plastic bottles. Along public grassy areas, spinklers are made creatively out of bottles poked with pin-sized holes, then attached to a hose and propped up on a tree branch stuck in the ground. Water escapes in all directions, reminding me of the fan sprinklers I used to run through as a kid.
While I tend to look for distinctive elements that make these walks unique and different from what I will return to, I recognize the aspects that make the streets of Huanuco just like any other busy little town in the world.
A father slighly hunched over holding his daughter´s hand as she learns how to walk. An older man, well dressed, maybe a new belt, walking particularly slow because he is in no rush to go anywhere. Women carrying groceries, though they never seem to buy more than what they need for one day. People leaving and entering their homes, living their lives in seemingly ordinary ways.
As I watch all this, imagining what I may or may not miss when I leave, I realize that so much of everyday life here is like everyday life anywhere on any day. There is a certain pulse and rhythm to the day, the week and even the year. I´m happy to have been here long enough to settle into the everyday/anyday qualities yet still have the feeling that I´m taking part in something remarkable.
