Ten Times as Much

I was used to maintaining a very predictable schedule in the U.S. Those of you who know me well know that to be a vast understatement.

5.30 AM Toast, orange juice in my kitchen.

6.30 AM Coffee and paperwork and writing at Northampton Coffee.

9.00 AM My office at Yes Computers to work on book designs.

12.00 MD Home for lunch.

1.30 PM Yes Computers and more design work.

4.00 PM Home, dinner.

6.00 PM A walk, a run or volleyball.

10.00 PM Bedtime.

On the other hand here in Callanca one wakes up in the morning and has absolutely no idea what to expect from the day. Planning is a laughable undertaking. A typical day is a day in which nothing typical happens. A day in Callanca might go like this:

7.00 AM You get up in the morning and go downstairs to eat breakfast. Your host mother has decided to make papitas and tallerines to sell on the street to make some extra money. You eat a potato and noodles for breakfast.

8.00 AM You ride your bike to one of the schools in town to talk to the director and the founder, a Peruvian now living in the States, who’s in town for a visit. The director has assured you that the founder will provide funding for one of your projects, a trip to an art fair in Ecuador for artisans studying at the school.

However, the founder’s mother is with him and doesn’t want him to give you the money. The school is in the middle of a building project—new classrooms—and the project has tapped out the founder. So the mother is doing everything she can to keep you and the founder apart. When you attempt to converse with him she brings over visitors that you simply must meet at that exact moment. When the subject of artisans comes up she tries to divert the conversation to artisans she knows and suggests that you all go to visit one of them. Right now. This minute.

9.30 AM Finally you, the director and the founder lock yourselves in the director’s office and start to talk about the funds. But just as you’re about to close the deal the founder’s mother shows up, banging on the door and shouting that a child has fainted. You aren’t particulary worried since you figure that this is but another ruse perpetrated with the intent to separate you and the founder. However, when everyone rushes to the child’s classroom you find that a child is, in fact, ill—pale and weak and trembling.

Since there are no ambulances in Callanca you carry the child to the founder’s Hyundai van, everyone piles in, and the founder drives the child to the posta de salud—the health post. Someone has called the child’s father and he arrives at the post. The mother had been called to the school previously and had arrived with us in the van.

The health post is 30 years old. Which doesn’t sound all that old but for an adobe building held together with cane that’s ancient. The ceiling of the consultorio where they take us to talk to the doctor is crooked and patched where it caved in last year.

The doctor questions and examines the child and finds nothing obviously wrong. He asks whether the child has eaten, if he’s seemed unusually tired lately, if he’s experienced any mental or emotional stress at home. He borrows your glucose test meter and tests the boy for hypoglycemia. Negative. The doctor writes up some orders for tests and says to take him to the emergency room in Chiclayo, the site of the nearest hospital.

11.00 AM Everyone piles in the van and the founder drives the child to the public hospital in Chiclayo. There are 30 or 40 people lined up at the emergency-room entrance and sitting on benches inside and outside. The founder hands the father 100 soles and the director of the school ushers the parents and child past the line and into the emergency room. She returns and you head back to the school. On the way, you stop at a bank in front of which all the moneychangers in Chiclayo do their trading. You park at the curb, the director rolls down a window, asks for the exchange rate, quibbles for a decimal point, and changes 4000 American dollars into soles for herself and the founder.

On the way back—in English so that the mother won’t interrrupt—you confirm with the founder the funding for the artisans’ trip to Ecuador.

1 PM Back at the school you’re expecting to make arrangements for receiving the money and then go home. Not a chance. Someone has cooked lunch and so you eat soup and ceviche with the director, the founder, his mother and one of the teachers. As you’re finally about to finish lunch, a local woman shows up with some pots, uncovers them, and begins to serve everyone a second lunch. She’s also come to ask a favor of the founder. You suspect that you’ve been kidnapped and parachuted into a scene from The Godfather. What happens next does nothing to quiet those suspicions.

You tell the founder that you absolutely have to go. You ask him to step outside and speak with you for a moment. Outside, near where the workers are constructing the new classrooms, you, the director and founder finally resolve the question of the funding. The founder descends a set of concrete stairs into the basement. The director motions for you to follow. In the basement, the founder pulls out his wallet and counts 1000 soles into your hand in 50s and 100s. You stuff the bills into your pocket. Sargent Shriver turns over in his grave.

And a postscript: They invite me out to dinner the following evening. Since the founder is busy during his brief visits to Callanca, I ask them to give me a call and and confirm that the dinner is still on and let me know what time to expect them. The next night they show up—the founder, his bodyguard, his mother and the school director—at my door unannounced at 8.00 PM, an hour after I’ve eaten. The founder asks if it’s OK if we stop in Chiclayo at a clinic to see his father. He’s brought his father with him from the States for prostate surgery. It’s cheaper here.

We park in front the clinic at 8.30 and the founder and the bodyguard go in. The mother, the director and I stay in the car and talk. For an hour. The founder and his bodyguard finally return, saying that the father is being impossible and that the nurses are at the point of tossing him out the window. As we’re about to leave the clinic and go someplace for dinner the founder’s cellphone rings. It’s the nurses. The father is going berserk, they need help.

The founder and the bodyguard go back upstairs. An hour passes. Two. The founder’s mother and the director go to sleep. I stay awake only because I don’t like the looks of the neighborhood, especially at this hour and with the bodyguard upstairs keepig the founder’s old man pinned to his hospital bed. Just as I’m about to switch on the ignition, close the windows and lock the doors, the founder returns. He’s left his bodyguard upstairs to deal with the old man.

We finally eat dinner at 11.00 PM. I’d eaten before I left Callanca but now I’m hungry again.

Things got a little better after that. The next time I visited the school they handed me a document to sign acknowledging that I’d received funds from the Foundation that runs the school. So Sargent Shriver can rest again in peace. And it turned out that the kid only had the measles. There’d been an outbreak at the school a few weeks earlier. We should’ve known.

After 6 months in the Peace Corps, I have one piece of unsolicited advice for anyone still reading this: you’re capable of doing about ten times as much as you think you can do.